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Chapter 1

Introduction

1.1 Introduction
A Wireless Sensor Network (WSN) is a group of hundreds or thousands of sensor nodes that have
capabilities of sensing the environment and communicate the information in wireless medium
[13].Wireless sensor network is the collection of sensor nodes with limited resources that work
jointly in order to achieve a common goal. Sensor nodes are not only used for military applications
,and they have also used in geographical monitoring, environmental monitoring and control,
pollution monitoring, target tracking , navigation, transport, health and medical, emotion based
computing and so on.

Fig1.1 Wireless sensor network

This Fig1.1 shows the group of sensors, forming wireless sensor network, and the sensors have
capability of sensing the environment and communicate the information in the wireless medium.
Due to small shape and size they work with limited resources and work jointly in order to achieve
a common goal. The Gateway manages the wireless network and aggregate data from distributed
WSN and help to achieve a desired result.
The limited energy resource is the drawback of the wireless sensor networks, so to save the energy,
the nodes power consumption must be reduced, to reduce the consumption of energy the nodes
must turn their transceiver on and off at appropriate time, an accurate timing is required between
the nodes. Sensor nodes are very tiny instruments and running with a limited energy, so it is not
simple to synchronize nodes effectively because an energy consumption.
Wireless Sensor Networks (WSNs) represent a new paradigm in wireless technology drawing
significant research attention from diverse fields of engineering. WSN technology is listed in “Top
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10 Emerging Technologies” that will change the world. WSNs consist of many sensor nodes.
These nodes sense the changes in the physical parameters similar to – pressure, temperature, etc.
The data sensed by these nodes are then transmitted to the Base Station (BS) for estimation. WSNs
are used for the variety of purposes like military surveillances, habitat monitoring, forest fire
detections, and landslide detections.
The main task of many researchers in this field is to develop smart surroundings with the help of
WSNs containing thousands of planned or ad-hoc deployed sensors, each capable of detecting
ambient conditions like temperature, sound, movements, light, or the presence of particular
objects. It is very important to make these sensing nodes as cheap and energy efficient as possible
and trust them to obtain high quality results. Hence, to have battery operated sensor nodes is a
good option. But despite of their small sizes, these batteries must be capable of giving a longer life
to these sensing nodes. The network protocol used must be very efficient to optimize the lifetime
of the nodes.
We also need to focus on algorithms and physical circuitries that can make maximum out of limited
power source. Some of the promising routing algorithms can be categorized into three types as
direct transmission algorithms, hop to hop transmission algorithms and cluster based algorithms.
In cluster based protocols, most of the energy consumption depends on cluster head selection,
cluster formation and the algorithm developed for routing the information.

Fig 1.2: Application of Wireless Sensor Network

The wireless sensor network (WSN) consists of a set of distributed and interconnected sensors
located in a target area. It aims to monitor and recognize environmental phenomena such as soil
moisture, air pollution, and health data [1]. Low-cost devices and easy-to-deploy sensor nodes
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have found a variety of applications in positioning and tracking [2], health care [3], environmental
monitoring [4], etc. Figure 1.3 shows some WSN applications in different fields.

Fig. 1.3: Wireless sensor network applications categories.

However, there are still many critical challenges that need to be tackled via reliable technology.
Usually, sensors are deployed in harsh environments with an unattended operation, which may
lead to the sensor or network failures. Therefore, it is important for sensors to have not only a fault
tolerance system but also the ability to do self-calibrating, self-recovering, self-repairing, and self-
testing. In some scenarios such as health applications, it is important to have accurate data
collection in the network. Data reliability in sensor networks is the area of focus for many
applications. Usually, data retrieved from WSNs have low reliability due to missing values,
inconsistent or duplicate data, errors, noise, and malicious attacks. Low-quality sensors may
compromise memory, battery functionality, communication efficacy, and computation ability, thus
leading to inaccurate WSN sensory data [5]. Sensor nodes are vulnerable to the effects of the
environment as well. A WSN with high density employs hundreds or thousands of sensor nodes
within a setting, which may eventually result in malfunction nodes, leading to inaccurate and
insufficient data. These nodes are susceptible to malevolent attacks such as eavesdropping, black
holes, and denial of service (DoS) [6]. In the field of WSNs, measurements that significantly differ
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from the normal pattern of sensed data are declared as outliers [7]. The potential causes of outliers
are noise and errors, events, and malicious attacks. Outlier detection in WSNs is the process of
identifying data instances that deviate from the rest of the data patterns based on certain
measurements [8].
Outliers can occur for different reasons, and understanding their source helps to decide what
actions to take after detecting them [9]. Many studies have investigated abnormal data detection
under various terms such as anomaly detection, fraud detection, and outlier detection [10]. In the
WSN context, the outlier also is defined as an anomaly or divergence which is unusual behavior
in comparison with the majority of sensory data as indicated in Figure 1.4. The outlier data can be
classified into two main classes, including single and batch outlier data. An outlier is single when
data are far from a group of sensory data, whereas batch outliers are bulk data points that
continuously occurred over a period. According to the related literature, there are no general
definitions of outliers or anomalies.
Usually, identifying outliers amongst a vast data are a difficult task [27]. The two primary
challenges in detecting outliers within WSNs are ensuring less resource consumption and
achieving high accuracy. These challenges should be overcame to ensure the accuracy and the
reliability of data retrieved from sensors for further processes [27].

Figure 1.4. Different types of outlier sources in WSNs.

There are lots of reasons to showing the synchronization problems in sensor networks.
Some reasons are as following:
1. Sensor nodes are required to co-ordinate their operations to perform a special task, e.g. Data
fusion. In which data is collected at different nodes or a single node are combined into a meaningful
result.
2. Life time of network is totally dependent on the power. So to increase the life of network, we
need to used power saving methods. For example when using power-saving modes, the nodes must
be sleep and wake up at coordinated times means synchronized.
Time synchronization is important for a sensor network. Time synchronization in a network is for
providing a common time for nodes in the network. To recognize the correct event time, sensor
nodes must be synchronized among themselves with universal time called global time. Therefore,
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time synchronization is significant characteristics in Wireless sensor networks. Local clock make
time synchronization an important part of WSN.
Four basic components of time synchronization which provide communication delay[14]:
i. Send Time
ii. Access Time
iii. Propagation Time
iv. Receive Time

i. Send Time
Send time which is the total time of building the message and transfer it to the
network interface to be sent. This time mostly depends on the operating systems in use.
ii. Access Time
Access time is that time in which the time needed to access the channel. Every network
engages a medium access control scheme.
iii. Propagation Time
Propagation time is that time in which the time required to propagating the message
through the air from the network interface of the sender to the network interface of the receiver.