Introduction to Wireless

Sensor Networks
Unit I / Overview of WSN
Prepared By

B S Bhatt

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 Syllabus / Unit -I
• Overview of WSN:
• Single-Node Architecture - Hardware
Components - Network Characteristics - Unique
constraints and challenges -
Enabling
Technologies for Wireless Sensor Networks-
Types of wireless sensor networks.

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 Topic 1
Introduction to WSN

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 Introduction
• A Sensor is a device used to gather information about a
physical process and translate into electrical signals that
can be processed, measured and analyzed.
• The physical process can be any real-world information
like temperature, pressure, light, sound, motion,
position, flow, humidity, radiation etc.
• A Sensor Network is a structure consisting of sensors,
computational units and communication elements for
the purpose of recording, observing and reacting to an
event or a phenomenon.
• The events can like physical world, an industrial
environment, a biological system while the controlling
or observing body can be a consumer application,
government, civil, military, or an industrial entity.
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• Such Sensor Networks can be used for remote sensing,
medical telemetry, surveillance, monitoring, data
collection etc.

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Wireless Sensor Networks
• A typical sensor network consists of sensors, controller
and a communication system. If the communication
system in a Sensor Network is implemented using a
Wireless protocol, then the networks are known as
Wireless Sensor Networks.

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• According to technologists, Wireless Sensor Networks
is an important technology for the twenty first century.
• Recent developments in MEMS Sensors (Micro Electro
Mechanical System) and Wireless Communication has
enabled cheap, low power, tiny and smart sensors,
deployed in a wide area and interconnected through
wireless links for various civilian and military
applications.
• A Wireless Sensor Network consists of Sensor Nodes
deployed in large quantities and support sensing, data
processing, embedded computing and connectivity.

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 Motivation for WSN
• The recent developments in engineering,
communication and networking led to new sensor
designs, information technologies and wireless
systems.
• Such advanced sensors can be used as a bridge
between the physical world and the digital world.
• Sensors are used in numerous devices, industries,
machines and help in avoiding infrastructure failures,
accidents, conserving natural resources, preserving
wildlife, increase productivity, provide security etc.
• The use of distributed sensor network contributed by
the technological advances in VLSI, MEMS and Wireless
Communication.
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 • With the help of modern semiconductor technology,
powerful microprocessors can be developed, smaller in
size when compared to the previous generation
products. This miniaturization of
processing, computing and sensing technologies led to
tiny, low- power and cheap sensors, controllers and
actuators.

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 Elements of WSN
• A typical wireless sensor network can be divided into
two elements. They are:
– Sensor Node
– Network Architecture
• A Sensor Node in a WSN consists of four basic
components. They are:
– Power Supply
– Sensor
– Processing Unit
– Communication System

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Fig 2 / Basic Components of WSN

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 Elements of WSN (Cont)
• The sensor collects the analog data from the physical
world and an ADC converts this data to digital data.
• The main processing unit a microprocessor or a
microcontroller, performs an intelligent data processing
and manipulation. Communication system consists of
radio system, a short-range radio for data transmission
and reception.
• As all the components are low-power devices, a small
battery like CR-2032, is used to power the entire system.

• A Sensor Node consists of not only the sensing

component but also other important features like
processing, communication and storage units.
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• With
and all these features, components
enhancements, a Sensor Node is responsible for
physical world data collection, network analysis, data
correlation and fusion of data from other sensor with its
own data.

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Network Architecture
• When a large number of sensor nodes are deployed in
a large area to monitor a physical environment, the
networking of these sensor nodes is equally important.
A sensor node in a WSN not only communicates with
other sensor nodes but also with a Base Station (BS)
using wireless communication.

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• The base station sends commands to the sensor nodes
and the sensor node perform the task by collaborating
with each other.
• The sensor nodes in turn send the data back to the
base station. A base station also acts as a gateway to
other networks through the internet.
• Afterreceivingthedatafromthesensornodes,abase station
performs simple data processing and sends the updated
information to the user using internet.
• Ifeachsensornodeisconnectedtothebasestation,it
is known as Single-hop network architecture.
• Although long distance transmission is possible, the
energy consumption for communication will be
significantly higher than data collection and
computation.
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Fig 4 / Single Hop Architecture

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 Multi-hop Architecture
• Hence, Multi-hop network architecture is usually used.
Instead of one single link between the sensor node and
the base station, the data is transmitted through one or
more intermediate node.

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• This can be implemented in two ways. Flat network
architecture and Hierarchical network architecture.
• In flat architecture, the base station sends commands
to all the sensor nodes but the sensor node with
matching query will respond using its peer nodes via a
multi-hop path.
• In hierarchical architecture, a group of sensor nodes
are formed as a cluster and the sensor nodes transmit
data to corresponding cluster heads.
• The cluster heads can then relay the data to the base
station

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Fig 6 / Flat and Hierarchical Network
Architectures

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 Network Topologies in WSN
• A WSN can be either a single-hop network or a multi-
hop network. The following are a few different network
topologies that are used in WSNs.
• StarTopology
• In star topology, there is a single central node known as
hub or switch and every node in the network is
connected to this hub. Star topology is very easy to
implement, design and expand. The data flows through
the hub and plays an important role in the network and
a failure in the hub can result in failure of entire
network.

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• Tree Topology
• A tree topology is a hierarchical network where there is
a single root node at the top and this node is connected
to many nodes in the next level and
continues.
energy consumption
The processing
is highest power
at the root
and node and
keeps on decreasing as we go down the hierarchical
order.

•Mesh Topology
• In mesh topology, apart from transmitting its own data,
each node also acts as a relay for transmitting data of
other connected nodes. Mesh topologies are further
divided into Fully Connected Mesh and Partially
Connected Mesh. In fully connected mesh topology,
each node is connected to every other node while in
partially connected mesh topology, a node is connected
one or more neighboring nodes.
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Fig 7 / Network Topologies in WSN

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 Applications of WSN
• Air Traffic Control (ATC)
• Heating Ventilation and Air Conditioning (HVAC)
• Industrial Assembly Line
• Automotive Sensors
• Battlefield Management and Surveillance
• Biomedical Applications
• Bridge and Highway Monitoring
• Disaster Management
• Earthquake Detection
• Electricity Load Management

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• Environment Control and Monitoring
• Industrial Automation
• Inventory Management
• Personal Health Care
• Security Systems

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 Topic 2
Single Node Architecture –
Hardware Components

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 Introduction
• Building a wireless sensor network requires the
constituting nodes to be developed. These nodes have
to meet the requirements from a given application.
They have to be small, cheap, energy efficient, equipped
with the right sensors, memory resources and sufficient
communication facilities. The hardware components of
the functioning node are explained as follows.

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 Overview of Sensor Node
• A basic sensor node comprises five main components
are shown in the Figure.
• Controller: To process allrelevant data
• Memory: To store programs and intermediate data.
• Sensors and actuators: Actual interface to the physical
world to observe or control physical parameters of the
environment.
• Communication: Device for sending and receiving
information over a wireless channel
• Power supply: Some form of batteries necessary to
provide energy and some form of recharging by
obtaining energy from the environment as well.
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Fig 8 / Basic Components of a Sensor Node

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 Controllers
• The controller is the core of a wireless sensor node. It is
• the Central Processing Unit (CPU) of the node It collects
• data from sensors, processes this data,
receives data from other sensor nodes, and decides on
the actuator’s behavior. It has to execute various
• programs, ranging from time-
critical signal processing and communication protocols
to application programs. Such a variety of processing
• tasks can be performed on
various controller architectures, representing trade-offs
between flexibility, performance, energy efficiency, and
costs.
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• Microcontrollers are suitable for WSNs since they can
reduce their power consumption by going into sleep
states where only parts of the controller are active.
• One of the main differences to general-purpose
systems is that microcontroller-based systems do not
include a memory management unit – for example,
protected or virtual memory is difficult.
• In a wireless sensor node, DSP can be used to process
incoming data. But the advantages of a DSP are not
required in a WSN node and they are usually not used.
• Another option for the controller is to use Field-
Programmable Gate Arrays (FPGAs) or Application-
Specific Integrated Circuits (ASICs) instead of 30
microcontrollers.
• An FPGA can be reprogrammed in the field to adapt to
a changing set of requirements , but this can take time
and energy.
• An ASIC is a specialized processor, designed for a given
application such as high-speed routers and switches.
• The typical trade-off here is loss of flexibility in return
for a considerably better energy efficiency and
performance.

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 Memory
• There is a need for Random Access Memory (RAM) to
store intermediate sensor readings, packets from other
nodes etc.
• RAM is fast, but it loses its contents if power supply is
interrupted.
• The program code can be stored in Read-Only Memory
(ROM) or in Electrically Erasable Programmable Read-
Only Memory (EEPROM) or flash memory.
• Flash memory can also serve as intermediate storage of
• data when the power supply goes off for some time.
The long read and write access delays of flash memory
should be taken into account as well as the high
required energy.
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 Communication Module
1. Choice of transmission medium
• The first choice is the transmission medium and usual
choices include radio frequencies, optical
communication, and ultrasound. Radio Frequency (RF)-
• based communication is vital
• requirement of most WSN applications.
It provides long range and high data rates, acceptable
error rates at reasonable energy expenditure, and does
not require line of sight between sender and receiver.
• For a practical wireless, RF-based system, the carrier
frequency
The wireless
has tosensor
be carefully
networks
chosen.
use communication
frequencies between about 433 MHz and 2.4 GHz.

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 2. Transceivers
• For actual communication, both a transmitter and a
receiver are required in a sensor node to convert a bit
stream coming from a microcontroller and convert them to
and from radio waves. Such combined devices are called
transceivers.
• Usually,
since half-duplex operation is realized
transmitting and receiving at the same time on a
wireless medium is impractical in most cases. A range of
low-cost transceivers is available that incorporate all the
circuitry required for transmitting and receiving,
modulation, demodulation, amplifiers, filters, mixers
etc..

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 3. Transceiver tasks and characteristics
• The following are the some of the important
characteristics of a transceiver which should be taken
into account.
– Service to upper layer
– Power Consumption and Energy Efficiency
– Carrier Frequency & Multiple channels
– Transmission Power Control
– Data Rates
– Modulation
– Noise Figure
– Power Efficiency
– Frequency Stability etc
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 4. Transceiver States
• Transmit State: The transmit part of the transceiver is
active and the antenna radiates energy.
• Receive State: The receive part is active.
• Idle State: A transceiver that is ready to receive but not
currently receiving anything is said to be in an idle state.
Sleep State: The significant parts of the transceiver are
• switched off. There are transceivers offering several
different sleep states.

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 Sensors & Actuators
• Sensors can be categorized into the following three
categories -
1. Passive Omni-directional sensors:
• They can measure a physical quantity at the point of the
sensor node without manipulating the environment by
active probing. They obtain the energy directly from the
environment – energy is only needed to amplify their
analog signal. There is no notion of “direction in
these measurements.
include thermometer, Typical
light sensors,
examples vibration,
microphones, humidity, chemical sensors etc

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2. Passive narrow-beam sensors: They are passive but
have a well-defined notion of direction
of
measurement. A typical example is a camera, which
can “take measurements” in a given direction, but has
to be rotated if need be.
3. Active sensors: They probe the environment, for
example, a sonar or radar sensor or some types of
seismic sensors, which generate shock waves by small
explosions.

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 Power Supply of Sensor Nodes
1. Traditional batteries The power source of a sensor
• node is a battery, either
non-rechargeable (primary batteries) or, if an energy
scavenging device is present on the node, also
rechargeable (secondary batteries).
• In some form or other, batteries are electro-chemical
stores for energy – the chemicals being the main
determining factor of battery technology.

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 2. Energy scavenging
• Some of the unconventional energy sources like fuel
cells, micro heat engines and radioactivity – convert
energy from stored secondary form into electricity in a
easy way than a normal battery would do.
• The entire energy supply is stored on the node itself –
once the fuel supply is exhausted, the node fails.
• The energy from a node’s environment must be tapped
into and made available to the node – energy
scavenging should take place.

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3. Photo-voltaics
The solar cells can be used to power sensor nodes. The
available power depends on whether nodes are used
outdoors or indoors, and on time of day. The resulting
power ranges between 10 mW/cm2 indoors and 15
mW/cm2 outdoors. Single cells achieve a fairly stable
output voltage of about 0.6 V. Hence, solar cells are
used to recharge secondary batteries.
4. Temperature gradients
Differences in temperature can be directly converted to
electrical energy. Theoretically, even small difference
for example, 5 K can produce considerable power, but
practical devices fall very short of theoretical upper
limits.
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5. Vibrations
Walls or windows in buildings are resonating with cars
or trucks passing in the streets, machinery often has
low- frequency vibrations, ventilations also cause it, and
so on. The available energy depends on amplitude and
frequency of the vibration and ranges between 0.1
mW/cm3 and 10, 000 mW/cm3 for some extreme
cases.

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Challenges of

WSN

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Introduction
• To realize the characteristics requirements, the
innovative mechanisms for a communication network
have to be found.
• The
find particular challenge is the need to
mechanisms specific to the idiosyncrasies of a given
application to support the specific quality of service,
and maintainability requirements.
• These mechanisms also have to generalize to a wider
range of applications and implementation of a WSN
becomes necessary for every individual application.
• Someofthemechanismsthatwillformtypicalpartsof
WSNs are:
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 1. Multi-hop Wireless Communication
• Since wireless communication is a core technique, a
direct communication between a sender and a receiver
is faced with limitations.
• In particular, communication over long distances is only
possible using high transmission power.
• The use of intermediate nodes as relays can reduce the
total required power.
• Hence, for many forms of WSNs, multi-hop
communication will be a necessary ingredient.

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 Energy Efficient Operation & Auto-configuration
• 2. Energy-efficient Operation: It is a key technique for
supporting long life time. The other options include
energy-efficient data transport between two nodes or
the energy-efficient determination of requested
information. The non-homogeneous energy
consumption – the forming of “hotspots” is an issue.
• 3. Auto-configuration: A WSN will have to configure
most of its operational parameters, independent of
external configuration. As an example, nodes should
be able to determine their geographical positions only
using other nodes of the network so- called “self-
location”. The network should be able to tolerate failing
nodes or to integrate new nodes.

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4. Collaboration & In-network Processing
• In some applications, a single sensor is not able to decide
whether an event has happened but several sensors have
to collaborate to detect an event and only the joint data of
many sensors provides enough information.
• Information is processed in the network in various forms
to achieve this collaboration. This is opposite to having
every node transmit all data to an external network and
process it “at the edge” of the network.
• An example is to determine the highest or the average
temperature within an area and to report that value to a
sink. To solve such tasks, readings from individual sensors
can be aggregated reducing the amount of data to be
transmitted and hence improving the energy efficiency.
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 5. Data Centric
• Traditional communication networks are centered
around the transfer of data between two specific
devices, each equipped with one network address –
the operation of such networks is thus address-centric.
• In a WSN, the nodes are deployed to protect against
node failures or to compensate for the low quality of a
single node’s actual sensing equipment. Hence,
switching from an address-centric paradigm to a data-
centric paradigm in designing architecture and
communication protocols is promising.
• An example for such a data-centric interaction will be
to request the average temperature in a given location
area, as opposed to requiring temperature readings
from individual nodes.
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 6. Locality
• The principle of locality will have to be embraced to
ensure in particular, scalability.
• Nodes with limited should attempt to limit the state
that they accumulate during protocol processing to
only information about their direct neighbors.
• This will allow the network to scale to large numbers of
nodes without having to depend on powerful processing
at each single node.

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 7. Exploit Trade-offs
• Similar to locality principle, WSNs will have to depend to
a large degree on exploiting various trade-offs between
contradictory goals, both during system design and
runtime.
• Examples for such trade-offs are - higher energy
expenditure allows higher result accuracy, longer
lifetime of the entire network trades off against
lifetime of individual nodes and node density.
• If there is a depart from an address-centric view of the
network, it may require new programming interfaces
beyond the simple semantics of the conventional
socket interface and allow concepts like required
accuracy, energy/accuracy trade-offs etc.
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 Topic 5

Enabling Technologies for WSN

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 Introduction
• It has only become possible to build wireless sensor
networks with some fundamental advances in enabling
technologies.
• First and foremost among these technologies is the
miniaturization of hardware.
• Smaller feature sizes in chips have driven down the
power consumption of the basic components of a sensor
node to a level that the constructions of WSNs can be
contemplated.
• This is particularly relevant to microcontrollers and
memory chips and the radio modems responsible for
wireless communication.
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• Reduced chip size and improved energy efficiency is
accompanied by reduced cost, which is necessary to
make redundant deployment of nodes affordable.
• The actual sensing equipment is the third relevant
technology next to processing and communication.
• However,itisdifficulttogeneralizebecauseofthevast
range of possible sensors.

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Fig 9 / Enabling Technologies for WSN

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 Energy Scavenging
• These three basic parts of a sensor node have to be
• accompanied by power supply.
This requirement depends on application, high capacity
batteries lasting for long times and can efficiently provide
small amounts of current.
• A sensor node also has a device for energy scavenging,
recharging the battery with energy gathered from the
environment – solar cells or vibration-based power
generation are conceivable options.
• Such a concept requires the battery to be efficiently
chargeable with small amounts of current, which is not a
standard ability.
• The counterpart to the basic hardware technologies is
software.
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• The architecture of the operating system or runtime
environment has to support simple re-tasking, cross-
layer information exchange and modularity to allow for
simple maintenance.
• This software architecture on a single node has to be
extended to a network architecture, where the division
of tasks between nodes is considered.
• The third part to solve is how to design appropriate
communication protocols.
• Figure 9 shows the enabling technologies for WSN.

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 Topic 6

Types of Wireless Sensor Networks

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 Introduction
• The types of networks are decided based upon the
environment so that they can be deployed underwater,
underground, on land and so on. Different types of WSNs
include:
– Terrestrial WSNs
– Underground WSNs
– Underwater WSNs
– Multimedia WSNs
– Mobile WSNs

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 Terrestrial WSN’s
• Terrestrial WSNs are capable of communicating base
stations efficiently and consist of hundreds to
thousands of wireless sensor nodes deployed either in
an unstructured or structured manner.
• In an unstructured mode, the sensor nodes are
randomly distributed within the target area dropped
from a fixed plane.
• The preplanned or structured mode considers optimal
placement, grid placement, and 2D, 3D placement models.
In this WSN, the battery power is limited but equipped
with solar cells as a secondary power source.
• TheenergyconservationoftheseWSNsisachievedby
using low duty cycle operations, minimizing delays, and
optimal routing, and so on.
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68
 Underground WSN
• The underground wireless sensor networks are more
expensive than the terrestrial WSNs in terms of
deployment, maintenance, and equipment cost
considerations and careful planning.
• The WSNs networks consist of several sensor nodes
hidden in the ground to monitor underground
conditions.
• To relay information from the sensor nodes to the base
station, additional sink nodes are located above the
ground.
• The underground wireless sensor networks deployed
into the ground are difficult to recharge.
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• The sensor battery nodes equipped with limited
battery power are difficult to recharge
• In addition to this, the underground environment
makes wireless communication a challenge due to the
high level of attenuation and signal loss.

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Fig 10 / Underground WSN

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Under Water WSN
• More than 70% of the earth is occupied with water.
These networks consist of several sensor nodes and
vehicles deployed underwater.
• Autonomous underwater vehicles are used for
gathering data from these sensor nodes. A challenge of
underwater communication is a long propagation
delay, and bandwidth and sensor failures.
• Underwater, WSNs are equipped with a limited battery
that cannot be recharged or replaced.
• The issue of energy conservation for underwater WSNs
involves the development of underwater
communication and networking techniques.
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Fig 11 / Underwater WSN

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Multimedia WSN
• Multimedia wireless sensor networks have been proposed
to enable tracking and monitoring of events in the form of
multimedia suchasimaging, video,andaudio.
• These networks consistof low-cost sensornodes equipped
with microphones and cameras.
• These nodes are interconnected with each other over a
wireless connection for data compression, data retrieval,
and correlation.
• The challenges with the multimedia WSN include high
energy consumption, high bandwidth requirements, data
processing, and compressing techniques.
• In addition to this, multimedia contents require high
bandwidth for the content to be delivered properly and
easily.
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Fig 12 / Multimedia WSN

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Mobile WSN
• These networks consist of a collection of sensor nodes
that can be moved on their own and can be interacted with
the physical environment.
• The
and mobile nodes can compute sense
communicate. Mobile wireless sensor networks are
much more versatile than static sensor networks.
• The advantages of MWSN over static wireless sensor
networks include better and improved coverage, better
energy efficiency, superior channel capacity, and so on.

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77
 Classification of WSN’s
• The classification of WSNs can be done based on the
application but its characteristics mainly change based
on the type.
• Generally, WSNs are classified into different categories
like the following.
– Static & Mobile
– Deterministic & Nondeterministic
– Single Base Station & Multi Base Station
– Static Base Station & Mobile Base Station
– Single-hop & Multi-hop WSN
– Self Reconfigurable & Non-Self Configurable
– Homogeneous & Heterogeneous
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 1. Static & Mobile WSN
• All the sensor nodes in several applications can be set
without movement so these networks are static WSNs.
Especially in some applications like biological systems uses
mobile sensor nodes which are called mobile networks.
The best example of a mobile network is the monitoring of
animals.
2. Deterministic & Nondeterministic WSN
• In a deterministic type of network, the sensor node
arrangement can be fixed and calculated. This sensor node’s
pre-planned operation is possible in simply some applications.
In most applications, the location of sensor nodes cannot be
determined because of different factors like hostile operating
conditions and harsh environment, so these networks are
called non-deterministic.

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 3. Single Base Station & Multi Base Station
• In a single base station network, a single base station is
used and it can be arranged very close to the region of
the sensor node. The interaction between sensor nodes
can be done through the base station. In a multi-base
station type network, multiple base stations are used
and a sensor node is used to move data toward the
nearby base station.
4. Static Base Station & Mobile Base Station
• Base stations are either mobile or static similar to sensor
nodes. The static type base station includes a stable
position close to the sensing area whereas the mobile base
station moves in the region of the sensor so that the sensor
nodes load can be balanced.
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 5. Single-hop & Multi-hop WSN
• In a single-hop type network, the arrangement of
sensor nodes can be done directly toward the base
station whereas, in a multi-hop network, both the
cluster heads and peer nodes are utilized to transmit
the data to reduce the energy consumption.
6. Self Reconfigurable & Non-Self Configurable
• Inanon-selfconfigurablenetwork,thearrangementof
sensor networks cannot be done by them within a
network and depends on a control unit for gathering data.
In wireless sensor networks, the sensor nodes maintain
and organize the network and collaboratively work by
using other sensor nodes to accomplish the task.
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 7. Homogeneous and Heterogeneous
• In a homogeneous wireless sensor network, all the
sensor nodes mainly include similar energy utilization,
storage capabilities and computational power.
• In heterogeneous network, some sensor nodes include
high computational power as well as energy necessities
as compared to others.
• The processing and communication tasks are separated
consequently.

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Model Question Bank

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 PART A
1. What is asensor?
2. What is asensor network?
3. Givetheelements ofWSN.
4. What arethe basic components of asensor node?
5. Differentiate between single hop and multi-hop
networks.
6. Differentiate between flat and hierarchical network
architectures.
7. What arethe various topologies used in WSN?
8. Giveanyfour applications of WSN.
9. How does wireless sensor network work?
10. What is the need for wireless sensor network?
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11. Mention the challenges of wireless sensor networks.
12. What is event detection?
13. What is energy scavenging?
14. Differentiate between sensor and actuator.
15. What is quality of service?
16. List the types of WSN.
17. What is Multi-hop wireless communication?
18. What is data centric?
19. What is an active sensor?
20. State the deployment options.

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 PART B
1. Discuss briefly the various hardware components used
in Single node architecture of WSN.
2. Explain the characteristics, constraints and challenges
of WSN.
3. Write a short note on enabling technologies for
wireless sensor networks.
4. Describe the types of wireless sensor networks in a
brief manner.

86
Wireless Sensor Networks
Architectures

1
 Syllabus / Unit 2
• Network
Networks- Scenarios-
Architecture-
Design
Sensor
Principle, Physical
Layer and Transceiver Design Considerations,
Optimization Goals and Figures of Merit, Gateway
Concepts, Operating Systems and Execution
Environments- Introduction to TinyOS and nesC-
Internet to WSN Communication.

2
 Topic 1
Sensor Networks Scenario

3
 Types of Sources & Sinks
• A source is any entity in the network that provide
information typically a sensor node and also be an
actuator operation.
node that provides feedback about an
A sink is the entity where information is required.
• There are three options for a sink - it can belong to the
• sensor network or just another sensor/actuator node or
can be an entity outside this network.
For the second case, the sink can be an actual device to
• interact with the sensor network or can also be a
gateway to another larger network such as Internet.
These main types of sinks are shown in Figure 2.1,
• showing sources and sinks in direct communication.

4
Fig 1 / Three Types of Sinks

5
 Single Hop Vs Multiple Hop Networks
• Because of limited distance, the simple direct
communication between source and sink is not possible
in WSN, which are intended to cover a lot environmental
or agriculture applications.
• To overcome such limited distances, the relay stations
are used with the data packets taking multi hops from
the source to the sink.
• The multi-hopping is a working solution to overcome
problems with large distances and can also improve the
energy efficiency of communication.
• It consumes less energy to use relays instead of direct
communication.
6
• The energy is actually wasted if intermediate relays are
used for short distances and for large distance, the
radiated energy dominate the fixed energy costs
consumed in transmitter and receiver electronics.
• Moreover multi-hop networks operate in a store and
forward fashion.

7
Fig 2 / MultihopNetwork

8
 Multiple Sinks & Sources
• So far, only networks with a single source and a single
sink have been explained.
• In many cases, there are multiple sources and/or
multiple sinks present. In the most challenging case,
multiple sources should send information to multiple
sinks, where either all or some of the information has to
reach all or some of the sinks. Figure 2.3 illustrates
these combinations.

9
Types of Mobility
• One of the main virtues of wireless communication is its
ability to support mobile participants. In wireless sensor
networks, mobility can appear in three main forms:
1. Node mobility:
The wireless sensor nodes can be mobile. The meaning of
such mobility is highlyapplication dependent. In node
mobility, the network has to reorganize itself frequently
enough to be able to function correctly. There are trade-
offs between the frequency and speed of node movement
on one hand and the energy required to maintain a desired
level of functionality in the network on the other hand.

10
2. Sink mobility:
The information sinks can be mobile. The important
aspect is the mobility of an information sink that is not
part of the sensor network, for example, a human user
requested information via a PDA while walking in an
intelligent building. In a simple case, such a requester can
interact with the WSN at one point and complete its
interactions before moving on. In many cases,
consecutive interactions can be treated as separate
unrelated requests.

11
Fig 4 / Mobile Sink through Sensor Network

12
 3. Event mobility:
• In applications like event detection and in tracking, the
cause of the events or the objects to be tracked can be
mobile. In such scenarios, the observed event is covered by
a sufficient number of sensors at all time.
• Hence,sensorswillwakeuparoundtheobject,engaged
in higher activity to observe the present object, and
then go back to sleep. As the event source moves
through the network, it is accompanied by an area of
activity within the network. This is called as Frisbee
Model as shown in Figure 2.4

13
 Topic 2
Design Principles for WSN

14
 Distributed Organization
• Both the scalability and the robustness optimization goal
are required to organize the network in a distributed
fashion.
• When organizing a network in a distributed fashion, it is
necessary to know potential shortcomings of this
approach.
• many cases, a centralized approach can produce
In
solutions that perform better or require fewer
resources.
•
One possibility is to use centralized principles in a
localized fashion by electing, out of set of equal nodes.
•
Such elections result in a dynamic hierarchy.
The
• election process should be repeated continuously
until the elected node runs out of energy
15
 In Network Processing Techniques
1. Aggregation:
• The simplest in-network processing technique is
aggregation. The term aggregation means
that
information is aggregated into a condensed form in
nodes intermediate between sources and sinks out of
information provided by nodes further away from the
sink. The aggregation function must be applied in the
intermediate nodes as shown in Figure 2.5.

16
Fig 5 / Aggregation as an Example

17
 2. Distributed Source Coding and Distributed
Compression:
• The objective is to encode the information provided by
several sensors by using traditional coding schemes,
which may be complex for simple sensor nodes.
• The readings of adjacent sensors are going to be quite
similar and correlated.
• Suchcorrelationcanbeexploitedinsteadofsendingthe
sum of the data so that the overhead can be reduced.

18
 3. Distributed and collaborative signal processing
• When complex computations on a certain amount of
data is to be done, it can be more energy efficient to
compute these functions on the sensor nodes using Fast
Fourier Transform (FFT). In principle, this is similar to
algorithm design for parallel computers. However the
energy
and consumption of communication
computation are relevant parameters to decide
between various algorithms.
4. Mobile code/Agent-based networking
• The idea of mobile code is to have a small, compact
representation of program code to be sent from node to
node. This code is executed locally for collecting
measurements and then decides where to be sent next.
This idea has been used in various environments
19
 Adaptive Fidelity & Accuracy
• The idea of making fidelity of computation depends upon
the amount of energy available for that particular
computation.
• This concept can be extended from a single node to an
entire network. As an example, consider a function
approximation application.
• When more sensors participate in the approximation,
the function is sampled at more points and the
approximation is better. But more energy has to be
invested.
•
Hence, it is up to an application to define the degree of
accuracy of the results and the task of the
communication protocols to achieve this accuracy. 20
 Data Eccentricity
• In traditional communication networks, the focus will be
on the pair of communicating peers, the sender and the
receiver of data.
• In a wireless sensor network, the interest of an
application is actual information reported about the
physical environment. This is applicable when a WSN is
redundantly deployed such that any given event can be
reported by multiple nodes.
• This method of concentrating on the data rather than
identity of nodes is called data-centric networking.
• For an application, this means that an interface is
exposed by the network where data only is addressed in
requests. 21
 Exploit Local Information
• Another
location information
useful technique
in the communication
is to exploit protocols
when-ever such information is present.

• Since the location of an event is crucial information for

many applications, mechanisms must be available to
determine the location of sensor nodes.
• Itof communication
can simplify the protocols
designandandcan operation
improve their
energy efficiency.

22
 Exploit Activity Patterns
• Activity patterns in a wireless sensor network are quite
different from that of traditional networks.
• The data rate averaged over a long time can be very
small.
• This can be detected by a larger number of sensors,
breaking into a frenzy of activity, causing a well-known
event shower effect.
• Hence, the protocol design should be able to handle
such bursts of traffic by switching between modes of
quiescence and of high activity.

23
 Exploit Heterogeneity
• Sensor nodes can be heterogeneous by constructions,
that is, they have larger batteries, farther-reaching
communication devices, or more processing power.
• They can also be heterogeneous by evolution, that is,
they started from an equal state, but scavenge energy
from the environment due to overloading.
• Heterogeneity in the network is both a burden and an
opportunity.
• The opportunity is an asymmetric assignment of tasks,
giving nodes with more resources or more capabilities
the more demanding tasks.
• The burden is asymmetric task assignments cannot be
static but have to be reevaluated.
24
Component Based Protocol Stacks
• The concept is a collection of components which can form a
basic “toolbox” of protocols and algorithms to build upon.
• All wireless sensor networks will require some form of
physical, MAC, Link layer protocols, routing and transport
layer functionalities.
• Moreover, “helper modules” like time synchronization,
topology control can be useful.
• On top of these basic components, more abstract
functionalities can then be built.
• The set of components active on a sensor node can be
complex and will change from application to application.
• Protocol components will also interact with each other
either by using simple exchange of data packets or by
exchange of cross-layer information.
25
 Topic 3

Physical Layer and Transceiver

Considerations

26
 Introduction
• Some of the crucial points influencing the Physical Layer
design in wireless sensor networks are -
–Low power consumption
–Small transmit power and a small transmission range
–Low duty cycle
–Low data rates in the order of tens to hundreds
kilobits per second
–Low implementation complexity and costs
–Low degree of mobility
–Small form factor for the overall node

27
Energy Usage Profile
• The choice of a small transmission power leads to an
energy consumption profile different from other wireless
devices like cell phones.
• The radiated energy is small and the overall transceiver
consumes much more energy than actually radiated.
• Then for small transmit powers, transmit and receive
modes consume more or less the same power
depending on the transceiver architecture.
• To reduce average power consumption in a low-traffic
wireless sensor network, the transceiver must go into
sleep state instead of just idling.
• During this startup time, no transmission or reception of
data is possible.
28
• The third key observation is the relative costs of
communications versus computation in a sensor node.
• A comparison of these costs depends for the
communication part on BER requirements, range,
transceiver type etc.

29
 Choice of Modulation Scheme
• The following factors have to be balanced for the choice
of modulation scheme -
– Required data rate and symbol rate
– Implementation complexity
– Relationship between radiated power and target BER
– Expected channel characteristics
• To maximize the time of transceiver in sleep mode, the
transmit times should be minimized. The higher the
data rate offered by a modulation, the smaller the time
needed to transmit a given amount of data and the
smaller the energy consumption. Moreover, the power
consumption of a modulation scheme depends much
more on the symbol rate than on the data rate.
30
 Dynamic Modulation Scaling
• To adapt the modulation scheme to the current situation,
an approach called dynamic modulation scaling is
employed.
• For the case of m-ary QAM, a model has been
developed with the symbol rate ‘B’ and the number of
levels per symbol ‘m’ as parameters.
• This model expresses the energy required per bit and
also the achieved delay per bit, taking into account the
higher levels of modulation.
• Hence the bit delay decreases for increasing values of
‘B’ and ‘m’. The energy per bit depends much more on
‘m’ than on ‘B’.
31
• For the particular parameters chosen, both energy per bit
and delay per bit can be minimized for the maximum
symbol rate.
• With modulation scaling, a packet is equipped with a
delay constraint, from which directly a minimum
required data rate can be derived.

32
 Antenna Considerations
• The desired small form factor of the overall sensor
nodes restricts the size and the number of antennas.
• If the antenna is much smaller than the carrier’s
wavelength, it is difficult to achieve good antenna
efficiency.
• In case of small sensor node cases, it will be difficult
to place two antennas with suitable distance to achieve
receive diversity.
• The antennas should be spaced apart at least 40–50% of
the wavelength used to achieve good effects from
diversity.

33
• Inaddition,radiowavesemittedfromanantennaclose to the
ground are faced with higher path-loss coefficients than the
common value α = 2 for free-space communication.

• Moreover,dependingontheapplication,antennasmust
not protrude from the casing of a node to avoid possible
damage to it.
• These restrictions limit the quality and characteristics of
an antenna for wireless sensor nodes.

34
 Topic 4

Optimization of Goals & Figure of

Merit

35
Introduction
•The following techniques will optimize a network,
compare solutions, decide a better approach for a
given application, and turn optimization goals into
measurable figures of merit.

36
 Quality of Service
• WSNs differ from other conventional communication
networks in the type of services they offer.
• These networks only move bits from one place to
another.
• Such QoS can be regarded as a low-level, networking-
device attributes like bandwidth, delay, jitter or as a
high-level, user attributes like perceived quality of a
voice communication or a video transmission.
• But high-level QoS attributes in WSN highly depend on
the application.
• Some generic possibilities are:

37
1. Event detection/reporting probability
The probability of an event that actually occurred is
not detected or not reported to an information sink
2. Event classification error
If events are to be both detected and classified, the
error in classification must be small.
3. Event detectiondelay
The delay between detecting an event and reporting to
all interested sinks
4. Missing reports
The probability of undelivered reports should be small
in periodic reporting applications.
38
5. Approximation accuracy
For function approximation applications,
the
average/maximum absolute error with respect to the
actual function.
6. Trackingaccuracy
In Tracking applications, the reported position should
be as close to the real position and the error should be
small.

39
 Energy Efficiency
• The most commonly considered aspects of energy
efficiency are:
1. Energy per correctly received bit
The average amount of energy to transport one bit of
information from the source to the destination.
2. Energy per reported event
The average energy spent to report one event
3. Delay/energy trade-offs
The notion of “urgent” events to justify the increased
energy investment for a speedy reporting of events.

40
4. Network lifetime
• The time for which the network is operational to fulfill
its tasks starting from a given amount of stored energy.
– Time to first node death: First node in the network run out of
energy and stop operating
– Network half-life: When 50% of the nodes run out of energy
and stopped operating.
– Time to partition: First partition of the network in two or
more disconnected parts occur
– Time to Loss of Coverage: For the first time any spot in the
deployment region is no longer covered by any node’s
observations.
– Time to failure of first event notification: The unreachable
part of the network does not want to report any events in the
first place.
41
 Scalability
• The ability to maintain performance characteristics
irrespective of the size of the network is called scalability.
Scalability requires consistent state such as addresses or
• routing table entries to be maintained.
Hence, the need to restrict such information is enforced
• with the resource limitations of sensor nodes with
respect to memory.

• The need for extreme scalability has direct

• consequences on the protocol design. implement
appropriate scalability
Architectures support rather
and protocols than trying to be
should
as scalable as possible.

42
 Robustness
• Related to QoS and scalability requirements, wireless
sensor networks should also exhibit an appropriate
robustness.
• They should not fail just because a limited number of
nodes run out of energy, or because their environment
changes.
• These failures have to be compensated by finding other
routes.
• A precise evaluation of robustness is difficult in practice
and depends mostly on failure models for both nodes
and communication links

43
 Topic 5
Gateway Concepts

44
 Need for Gateways
• For practical deployment, the sensor network has to
interact with other information devices. The standard
example is to read the temperature sensors in one’s
home while traveling. Figure 2.6 shows the networking
scenario.
• The WSN has to exchange data with such a mobile
device or with some sort of gateway which provides the
physical connection to the Internet.
• The first option is to regard a gateway as a simple router
between Internet and sensor network. This will entail
the use of Internet protocols within the sensor network.
• The next option is to design the gateway as an actual
application-level gateway on the basis of the
application-level information.
45
Fig 6 / WSN with Gateway Node

46
 WSN to Internet Communication
• For example, a sensor node wants to deliver an alarm
message to some Internet host.
• The first problem to solve is to find the gateway from
within the network.
• If several gateways are available, the selection of the
particular route and gateway for a given destination have
to be done.
• To handle several gateways the option is to build an IP
overlay network on top of the sensor network. Figure 2.7
shows the mapping of Alice to a concrete IP address.
• The sensor node has to include sufficient information such
as IP address and port number in its own packets.
• The gateway in turn will extract this information and
translate it into IP packets.
47
Fig 7 / WSN to Internet Communication

48
 Topic 6

Operating Systems & Execution

Environment

53
Embedded Operating Systems
• The traditional tasks of an operating system are controlling
and protecting the access to resources, managing their
allocation to users and support for concurrent execution of
processes.
• These tasks are only partially required in an embedded
system and these systems do not have required resources
to support a full-blown operating system.
• In particular, the need for energy-efficient execution
requires support for energy management or Dynamic Voltage
Scaling (DVS) techniques.
• Also, external components like sensors, the radio modem,
or timers should be handled easily and efficiently.
• All this requires an appropriate programming model to
structure a protocol stack and explicit support for energy
management. 54
 Programming Paradigms
1. Concurrent Programming
• The support for concurrent execution is crucial for WSN
nodes to handle data coming from arbitrary sources like
multiple sensors or the radio transceiver at arbitrary
points in time.
• For example, a system can poll a sensor to decide
whether data is available and process the data, then poll
the transceiver to check whether a packet is available
and then immediately process the packet and so on.

55
2.Process Based Concurrency
• Most general-purpose operating systems support
concurrent execution of multiple processes on a single
CPU. Hence such a process-based approach can be used
to support concurrency in a sensor node as illustrated in
(b) of Figure 2.10.
• Mapping such an execution model of concurrent
processes to a sensor node shows that there are some
granularity mismatches.
•
This problem is severe for smaller tasks to be executed
when compared to overhead.

56
Fig 10 / Programming Models for WSN

57
3. Event-based Programming
• The system waits for any event to happen, where an
event can be the availability of data from a sensor, or
arrival of a packet.
• Such an event is then handled by a short sequence of
instructions that stores the occurrence of event and
necessary information.
• This is called event based programming model as shown
in Figure 2.11.
• This programming model distinguishes between two
different “contexts”: - time-critical event handlers
(execution cannot be interrupted) and for
the
processing of normal code (only triggered by the event
handlers).
58
Fig 11 / Event Based Programming Model

59
4.Interfaces to Operating System
• In WSNs, the interfaces should be accessible from
protocol implementations.
• This interface is closely tied with the structure of
protocol stacks.
• For example Application Programming Interface (API)
comprises, a “functional interface, object abstractions,
and detailed behavioral semantics”.
• Abstractions are wireless links, nodes and so on.
• The
inquiry,possible functions include state
manipulation, transmitting of data, access to hardware
and setting of policies.

60
 Operating System & Protocols Stack
• In communication protocol structuring, the individual
protocols are stacked on top of each other, each layer only
using functions of the layer directly below.
• This layered approach has multiple benefits in keeping the
entire protocol stack manageable.
• As an example, consider the use of information about the
strength of the signal received from a communication
partner.
• This physical layer information can be used to assist in
networking protocols to decide about routing changes.
• Hence, one single source of information can be used by
many other protocols not directly associated with the
source of this information.
• Such cross-layer information exchange is one way to
loosen the strict confinements of the layered approach. 61
 Dynamic Energy & Power Management
1.Probabilistic State Transition Policies These policies
• regulate the transition between various
sleep states.
• They start out by considering sensors randomly
distributed over a fixed area and events arrive with
certain temporal distributions and spatial distributions.
• This allows them to compute probabilities for the time
to the next event, once an event has been processed.

62
2. Controlling Dynamic Voltage Scaling
• For example, only a single task has to be run in an
operating system. Hence, a clever scheduler is required
to decide exact clock rate to use in that situation to meet
all deadlines. This can require feedback from applications
for example, video playback in reference.
3. Trading off fidelity against energy consumption
•There are certain tasks that can be computed with a
higher or lower level of accuracy. The fidelity achieved by
such tasks is a candidate for trading off against other
resources. In a WSN, the natural trade-off is against energy
required to compute a task.

63