Chapter 2

Wireless Sensor Networks

As from the previous chapter we get to know about the potential of wireless sensor
networks and how it is useful in application. This chapter gives the detail study about
routing challenges and design issues in wireless sensor networks, wireless sensor
networks architecture and the routing protocols in WSN.

Figure 2.1 Wireless Sensor Networks[20]

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2.1 Routing Challenges and Design Issues in WSNs

Node deployment: Node deployment in Wireless sensor networks plays very important
role related with the performance of the routing protocols. Based on applications node
deployment can be either deterministic or randomized. In deterministic node deployment,
the sensors are manually placed and data is routed through pre-determined paths. In
random node deployment, the sensor nodes are randomly positioned in an ad hoc
manner. So, there are several issues related with random deployment as coverage,
optimal clustering etc. which need to be addressed.
Energy consumption without losing accuracy: Sensor nodes have limited supply
required to performing computations and transmitting information in a wireless
environment. Being energy deficient issues of energy consumption in WSN nodes need
to be addressed. WSN network lifetime shows a strong dependence on the battery
lifetime. In a multihop WSN, each node plays a dual role as data sender and data router.
Power failure in some sensor nodes lead to malfunctioning of nodes can cause
topological changes and might require rerouting of packets and reorganization of the
network.
Node/Link Heterogeneity: In case of many applications of sensor networks there might
be requirement of deployment of a diverse mixture of sensor nodes with different types
and capabilities. Data generation from different sensors nodes in WSN, can be of
different rates. Similarly a network can follow different data reporting models and can be
subjected to different quality of service constraints. In Such a heterogeneous environment
routing techniques become more complex.
Fault Tolerance: Fault tolerance is very important issue and deals with sensor nodes
which may fail or be blocked due to lack of power, physical damage, or environmental
interference. It is desired that the failure of any of the sensor nodes should not affect the
overall task of the sensor network. MAC and routing protocols must address the issue in
case of many node failures and need formation of new links and routes to the data
collection base stations. This includes adjusting transmit powers and signaling rates on
the existing links to reduce energy consumption, or rerouting packets in a fault-tolerant
sensor network.

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Scalability: In case of Wireless sensor networks in any sensing area deployment of
thousands of nodes happens. It is required that every routing scheme operating in the
network must be able to work with this huge number of sensor nodes. Addition to this,
sensor network routing protocols should be scalable enough to respond to events in the
environment. To address energy related issue it is also desired that in routings schemes
sensor nodes can remain in the sleep state, till any event happens or initiates. This is also
desirable because of data from the few remaining sensors providing a coarse quality.
Network Dynamics: In most of the network architectures it is assumed that sensor nodes
in a wireless sensor network are stationary. However in many applications mobility of
both Base Stations and sensor nodes is sometimes necessary. In such cases routing
messages from or to moving nodes becomes more challenging since route stability
becomes an important issue, besides energy, bandwidth etc. Talking about applications of
wireless sensor network the sensed phenomenon can be either dynamic or static, e.g., it is
dynamic in a target detection/tracking application, while it is static in forest monitoring
for early fire prevention. Monitoring static events allows the network to work in a
reactive mode, simply generating traffic when reporting. Dynamic events in most
applications require periodic reporting and consequently generate significant traffic to be
routed to the BS.
Transmission Media: In a multi-hop sensor network, communicating nodes are linked
by a wireless medium. The traditional problems associated with a wireless channel (e.g.,
fading, high error rate) may also affect the operation of the sensor network. As the
transmission energy varies directly with the square of distance therefore a multi-hop
network is suitable for conserving energy.
Connectivity: The connectivity of WSN depends on the radio coverage. If there
continuously exists a multi-hop connection between any two nodes, the network is
connected. Connectivity is intermittent if WSN is partitioned occasionally, and sporadic
if the nodes are only occasionally in the communication range of other nodes.
Coverage: The coverage of a WSN node means either sensing coverage or
communication coverage. Typically with radio communications, the communication
coverage is significantly larger than sensing coverage. For applications, the sensing
coverage defines how to reliably guarantee that an event can be detected. The coverage of

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a network is either sparse, if only parts of the area of interest are covered or dense when
the area is almost completely covered. In case of a redundant coverage, multiple sensor
nodes are in the same area.
Data Aggregation: Sensor nodes usually generate significant redundant data. So, to
reduce the number of transmission, similar packets from multiple nodes can be
aggregated. Data aggregation is the combination of data from different sources according
to a certain aggregation function, e.g., duplicate suppression, minima, maxima and
average. It is incorporated in routing protocols to reduce the amount of data coming from
various sources and thus to achieve energy efficiency. But it adds to the complexity and
makes the incorporation of security techniques in the protocol nearly impossible.
Data Reporting Model: Data sensing and reporting in WSNs is dependent on the
application and the time criticality of the data reporting. In wireless sensor networks data
reporting can be continuous, query-driven or event-driven. The data-delivery model
affects the design of network layer, e.g., continuous data reporting generates a huge
amount of data therefore, the routing protocol should be aware of data-aggregation
Quality of Service: In some applications, data should be delivered within a certain period
of time from the moment it is sensed; otherwise the data will be useless. Therefore
bounded latency for data delivery is another condition for time-constrained applications.
However, in many applications, conservation of energy, which is directly related to
network lifetime, is considered relatively more important than the quality of data sent. As
the energy gets depleted, the network may be required to reduce the quality of the results
in order to reduce the energy dissipation in the nodes and hence lengthen the total
network lifetime. Hence, energy-aware routing protocols are required to capture this
requirement.

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2.2 Sensor Network Architecture
Before the introduction of architecture of WSN the point comes “Why Wireless Sensor
?” if we have wired network and that fulfills the requirement and can be applied to all
applications, This is answered with the help of Moore’s Law as:

1. Moore’s Law is making Sufficient CPU performance available with low

power requirements in a small size.
2. Research in Material Science has resulted in novel sensing materials for many
chemical, biological, and physical sensing tasks.
3. Transceivers for wireless devices are becoming smaller, less expensive, and
less power hungry.
4. Power source improvements in batteries, as well as passive power sources
such as solar or vibration energy, are expanding application options.
Moore’s law presents the main factors by which we get to know that why we need
Wireless sensor network. Once we get to know the need of WSN, now the point comes
here is the architecture because without knowing it one can not know about the network.

2.2.1 Architecture of a typical sensor network

The two basic kinds of sensor network architecture are classified as layered and clustered
architecture.
2.2.1.1 Layered Architecture
A layered architecture has a single powerful base station (BS), and the layers of sensor
nodes around it correspond to nodes that have the same hop-count to the base station
(BS) as shown in fig. 2.2. Layered architectures have been used with in-building wireless
backbones, and in military sensor-based infrastructure, such as the multi-hop
infrastructure network architecture (MINA) [2]. In the in building scenario, BS becomes
an access point to a wired network and small nodes form wireless backbone to provide
wireless connectivity.
The users use hand-held devices like PDAs to communicate to BS via small nodes.
Unified Network Protocol Framework (UNPF [2]) is a set of protocols for complete
implementation of a layered architecture for sensor networks.

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 Three-hop Sensor
Two-hop
Coverage
One-hop

BS

Figure 2.2. Layered Architecture

2.2.1.2 Clustered Architecture

This architecture is based on the concept that higher energy nodes can be used to process
and send the information while low energy nodes can be used to perform the sensing in
the proximity of the target. Hence this architecture organized the sensor nodes into
clusters. Each cluster is governed by a cluster-head[10]. The nodes in each cluster are
involved in message exchanges with their respective cluster-heads and these heads send
messages to a BS, which is usually an access point connected to a wired network. The
creation of clusters and assigning special tasks to cluster heads can greatly contribute to
overall system scalability, lifetime, and energy efficiency. Figure 2.3 shows this
architecture where any message can reach the BS in at most two hops. Clustering can be
extended to greater depths hierarchically. Clustering architecture is especially useful for
sensor networks because of its inherent suitability for data fusion. (Data aggregation can
be perceived as a set of automated methods of combining the data that comes from many
sensor nodes into a set of meaningful information. With this respect, data aggregation is
known as data fusion).The data gathered by all members of the cluster can be fused at the
cluster-head and only the resulting information needs to be communicated to the BS.
Sensor networks should be self-organizing, hence the cluster formation and election of
cluster-heads must be an autonomous and a distributed process. This is achieved through
network layer protocols which are mainly two layer routing techniques where one layer is
used to select cluster heads and the other layer is used for routing.

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 Cluster

Cluster-head-head

Sensor node

Flow of data
BS

Figure 2.3. Clustered Architecture

However, most techniques in this category are not about routing, rather on “who and
when to send or process/aggregate” the information. Channel allocation etc., which can
be orthogonal to the multihop routing function.

2.3 OSI based Sensor network architecture

The sensor network protocol architecture is a stack of following layers: Application layer,
Transport layer, Network layer, Data Link layer, and Physical layer (figure 2.4). In
addition to these layers wireless sensor network also requires following management
planes in order to function efficiently: Power management plane, Mobility plane, and
Task Planes. The functionality of Power Management Plane is to minimize power
consumption which may include turn off functionality to preserve energy of the network.
The function of Mobility Plane is to detect and register movement of nodes to maintain a
data route to the sink. The Task plane deals with scheduling of the sensing tasks assigned
to the sensor field. It balances among the active and functioning nodes as well as free
nodes which are non functional so that free nodes can focus their energy on routing and
data aggregation. These management planes play very important role in monitoring the
power consumption in the network, movement of nodes, and task distribution among
sensor nodes. Further these layers help in reducing power consumption by coordinating
sensing tasks and routing. All protocols developed for wireless sensor networks must
address all three of these planes.

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Physical Layer
Likewise the functioning of basic OSI network model the Physical Layer of wireless
sensor networks deals with connectivity related issues if a wireless sensor network. In
WSN frequency selection, carrier frequency generation, signal detection, modulation, and
encryption is part of physical layer. Energy consumption minimization is major issue at
this layer apart from other issues which are the same as those of other wireless networks.
The minimum output power required to transmit over a distance d is proportional to d to a
power of n, where n varies from 2 to 4 and is closer to four when the antennae are near
the ground as is typical in wireless sensor networks[36]. This is due in part to ground-
reflected rays, which causes partial signal cancellation. This problem is overcome by
multi-hop communication and high node density.

Task Management Plane

Mobility Management plane
Power Management Plane

Application Layer

Transport Layer

Network Layer

Data Link Layer

Physical layer

Figure 2.4: OSI based sensor architecture

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Data Link Layer
Data link layer deals with the multiplexing of data streams, data frame detection, medium
access and error control. At data link layer in a wireless sensor network to address the
issue of power consumption and data centric routing there should have a MAC protocol
and that MAC protocol must meet two goals: first to create a network infrastructure,
(establishing communication links between deployed thousands of sensor nodes) and
providing the network self-organizing capabilities. The second goal is to fairly and
efficiently share communication resources between all the nodes. At present power
consumption being secondary concern most MAC protocols fail to meet these two goals.
In wireless sensor networks there is no provision of central controlling agent among a
much larger number of nodes than traditional ad-hoc networks. And above this node
malfunctioning because of power failures the network topology keep on changing and
any MAC protocol for wireless sensor networks must also take this issue into account.
The MAC protocols presented here are sensor-MAC (SMAC) and Etiquette Protocol for
Sensor Networks.
• SMAC
SMAC provides nodes a way to discover their neighbors and establish
transmission/reception schedules. The main principles behind SMAC are a periodic listen
and sleep schedule[9], collision and overhearing avoidance, and message passing. It
works by multi-hop communication and self-configuration of nodes. The focus of SMAC
is on system-wide performance and network lifetime. Therefore, applications will have
long idle time and must tolerate some latency. The nodes are formed in a flat topology so
that neighbors can always communicate with each other and changes are easy to
accommodate.
All nodes in the network are set to have the same listen and sleep time period. During the
listen period, the node waits for communication from its neighbors with its receiver on.
During the sleep period, the node turns its receiver off to conserve energy. The nodes are
free to choose their own schedule but to reduce overhead and latency, neighboring nodes
are synchronized. The nodes then broadcast their schedules and cache the schedules of
their neighbors. If two neighbors wish to communicate, one simply waits for the other to
wake up. If two nodes wish to communicate to the same node, they send out a request to

20
send (RTS) message. The first RTS received is the one honored and is responded to with
a clear to send (CTS) message[9]. All nodes will then resume their sleep cycle when the
transmission is complete. The downside to this pattern is increased latency due to the
periodic sleep schedule and the delay can accumulate on each hop. The latency
requirement of a specific application places a fundamental limit on sleep time of nodes.
The nodes are free to choose their own listen and sleep schedules using the
following rules:
• On start-up there are three methods to choosing the listen and sleep schedule. The
node listens for a specified amount of time and if it does not receive any
communication from a neighbor, it arbitrarily chooses its schedule and broadcasts
it immediately to its neighbors. This node becomes a synchronizer. If the node
receives a neighbor's schedule in that start-up period it will adopt that schedule
and wait for a random delay to broadcast to its neighbors. This node is called a
follower. The last scenario is that a node creates its own schedule and hears a
neighbor's before it is able to broadcast. In this case the node will merge the two
schedules and adopt this as its schedule. Some nodes may fail to discover all its
neighbors during this start-up period, but may find them later.
• If a node joins an already established sensor network, it will listen until it
discovers an active node. It will then send an introduction packet to this active
node, and it will respond by forwarding the new neighbors its schedule table. The
new node will treat every node in the table as a potential neighbor and try to
contact them during their listen period. This new node will attempt to find a
synchronizer among those and follow it. If it is unable to locate one, it will simply
choose its own schedule and broadcast it to the network.
Synchronization between neighbors must happen periodically to prevent long-term clock
drift. The period between updates may be quite long (a magnitude of tens of seconds).
Synchronization is done by sending a synchronization (SYNC) packet. The SYNC packet
is a very short packet containing only the node ID and the time of its next sleep relative to
the moment the sender finishes transmitting the SYNC packet[29]. The receiver then
adjusts its timer counters accordingly. Synchronizers also need to periodically
synchronize all of its followers. The followers only need to update neighbors not on the

21
same schedule. In order to accommodate receiving SYNC messages and DATA, SMAC
divides the listen time into two parts, one to listen for SYNC and the second to listen for
RTS.
Collision avoidance is accomplished through physical and virtual carrier sense. Physical
carrier sense is carried out before a node initiates a unicast transmission. The node sends
out an RTS message and then waits to receive a CTS message from the intended
recipient. If the transmitting node does not receive the CTS, it sleeps until the receiver's
next listen period. Each transmission packet contains a duration field indicating how long
the remaining transmission will last. If a node intercepts a packet destined for another
node, it stores this data in a variable called Network Allocation Vector (NAV). If NAV is
not equal to zero, the node knows the transmission medium is busy and it can keep silent
until all other transmissions are complete. This is called virtual carrier sense. If both
physical and virtual carrier sense give the OK, the node is free to transmit.[29]
In traditional MACs every node will continue to listen to all transmissions from all
neighbors, but in the Wireless Sensor Network, this is far too expensive and a waste of
the nodes' energy resources. SMACS allows interfering nodes to sleep after overhearing
an RTS or CTS broadcast. This prevents neighbors from overhearing long DATA
packets. In order to avoid all interference, all immediate neighbors of both the sender and
receiver should sleep. The RTS and CTS also contain the duration of the transmission, so
the overhearing nodes will know how long they should sleep.
Message passing is a primary function of networks. A message is defined as a collection
of meaningful, interrelated units of data. A message may be divided into a series of short
packets or may be transmitted as a single long packet. A long single packet has the
disadvantage of a long retransmission time if only a few bits are errors. Smaller packets
have the disadvantage of large control overhead and longer delay because the RTS/CTS
ritual must be performed for every packet. The SMAC approach is to fragment a long
message into small fragments and transmit them in bursts. The sender will use a single
RTS for the burst and reserve the medium for enough time to transmit all the fragments.
The sender then waits for an acknowledgement (ACK) after each fragment is transmitted.
If it fails to receive the ACK, it extends the reservation time using the duration field in
the next transmission and resends the lost packet. The other reason for using the ACK

22
approach is that if a neighbor of the receiver wakes up or a new node joins the network in
mid-transmission, it will not hear the DATA. If the receiver did not send ACK
frequently, the new node may mistakenly infer from its carrier sense that the medium is
clear. If it starts transmitting, it will interfere with the receiver of our original
transmission. The ACK also carries the duration so the receiver's neighbors can sleep
appropriately.AC has been shown to effectively reduce energy consumption, but the
system must be able to tolerate a high level of latency.

• Etiquette Protocol
Etiquette Protocol is a power-conserving protocol designed to rest on top of an
existing MAC protocol [9]. The MAC still handles the micro-details of communications,
such as channel contention. The main ideas behind Etiquette Protocol are:
• communication is scheduled in a completely distributed manner
• nodes can dynamically adapt their schedule in response to packet load
• communication between neighbors is done by appointments
• the onus of communication lies with the sender
Nodes start by scheduling 'office hours' at regular intervals. Neighbor nodes request
'appointments' for sending data during these office hours. The appointment packet
specifies the duration of the appointment and the receiver either grants or denies the
appointment. The grant packet will specify the time and duration of the appointment.
Both nodes will sleep until the time of the appointment because all the nodes know the
precise interval of communication.
Nodes are free to choose their own office hours independently of other nodes with the
condition that the office hour period cannot exceed a specified time, namely Pmax. Pmax
is set to create an upper bound on the latency of the network. A lower Pmax will create a
more responsive network, but since holding office hours depletes the energy of a node,
the cost will be higher power consumption. A Sensor Network in which latency is not a
primary concern will have a higher Pmax, thus conserving more energy. This forcers a
node to hold office hours at least once in Pmax units of time[29]. At the start of its office
hours, the node broadcasts an announcement containing the duration and period.

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When a new node enters a network and is powered on, its first concern is to establish
office hours so it may communicate with its neighbors. To do this, it scans the channel
for a set amount of time and gathers the office hours of all its immediate neighbors. It
then chooses its own office hours in such a way as to minimize overlap with the office
hours of its neighbors.
To determine a neighbor's office hours, a node will turn its radio on and is guaranteed to
hear an announcement within Pmax time. It caches all overheard office hour
announcements for future reference. Once the announcement is heard, the node is then
able to request an appointment. The appointment request contains four parameters: the
appointment length, appointment type, desired time interval for appointment, and number
of appointments needed. The appointment length specifies the size of the payload to be
communicated. The type can be one-time or periodic. Periodic appointments are
especially useful in data gathering applications where data must be sent on a regular
basis. The use of periodic appointments avoids the need to request an appointment for
each packet to be sent. The desired time interval may be requested by the sender to avoid
conflicts with other appointments it may have already scheduled. The node may also need
to request a number of appointments if the data is greater than the maximum packet size
of the network and must be split into several smaller packets.
The receiver then looks for an appropriate slot when the channel is expected to be free.
However, it only has locally available information: its own set of appointments, office
hour schedule, and usually incomplete knowledge of appointments of its neighbors. It
must select a time-slot that does not interfere or overlap any of these other obligations
and meets all the constraints set forth in the request. If no suitable time-slot is available,
the node may overlap the appointment with its office hours, effectively reducing the
duration of its office hours. This may be more energy efficient for the node, but may
prevent some neighbors from setting up appointments. If a suitable slot is found, the node
sends a grant-appointment message containing the start time of the appointment. If not, it
sends a deny-appointment message. If the node is granted an appointment, it records the
appointment time, enters sleep mode, and waits for the appointment time.
If the requesting node does not receive a response, it waits for a request-timeout interval
and resends the request. There is a retry-threshold and if the number of requests exceeds

24
this threshold, it assumes the receiving node is no longer in the network and discards all
messages intended for that destination.
When the appointment time is reached, both nodes turn on their radios. Because the
appointment time is communicated as an offset of the time the grant-appointment
message was sent, the appointment time recorded by the sender may be different than that
of the receiver. In order to compensate for this difference, the nodes use a 'guard band'
around the appointment slot and actually power their radios on at the beginning of the
guard band. This prevents the loss of data due to one node preemptively transmitting.
Etiquette Protocol offers several options to help optimize performance. The first allows
nodes to send small packets during the receiver's office hours without having to make an
appointment. This is done when the packet being sent is smaller than the combined size
of the appointment-request and grant-appointment messages. Etiquette Protocol also
allows nodes to adapt their office hours according to the load on the node. If the node is
idle for longer than a given threshold during their office hours, the node reduces the
length[18]. On the other hand, if the fraction of idle time drops below another threshold,
the office hours have become too crowded and the node will increase the duration of its
office hours. The choice of thresholds is dependent on the requirements of the
application. When an event monitoring system causes bursts of communication data, a
highly aggressive strategy should be used to change the office hours. Conversely, a more
conservative approach will work for habitat monitoring systems that report consistently
and periodically. If an inappropriate adaptive strategy chooses office hours that are too
short, latency will increase. If the duration of office hours is too long, the node will be
idle for a significant period of time, which is a waste of energy.

Network Layer
The network layer in a WSN deals with routing in the network. As battery consumption
plays very important role in WSN, network layer must be designed with the following
criteria’s in priority: power efficiency, data-centric networking and WSNs have attribute-
based addressing and location awareness. As we discussed earlier the Data Link layer
deals how two nodes talk to each other and the network layer is tresponsible to routing
for communication i.e; deciding with which intermediate nodes communication is

25
possible. Simplest example of routing is flooding[29]. According to this routing
technique, each node receiving data repeats it by broadcasting the data to every neighbor
unless the max hop lifetime of the data has been reached or the receiving node is the
destination. The major advantage of flooding is the simple technique of routing. It
requires no complexity related with maintenance and route discovery. On the other hand
the shortcomings are also there. The first issue is that of implosion. Implosion occurs
when two nodes (A and B) share multiple neighbors. Node A will broadcast data to all n
of these neighbors. Node B will then receive a copy of the data from each of them. The
second issue is that of overlap, when two nodes share the same sensing region. If a
stimulus occurs within this overlap, both nodes will report it. Power consumption is
major issue in WSN and the last and most crucial problem related with this is resource
blindness. In Flooding data is passed to every node by not taking energy resources into
account. Another issue is from Flooding is gossiping. In gossiping, when a node receives
data, it randomly chooses a neighbor and sends the data to it. Gossiping avoids the
problem of implosion, but does not address the other two concerns and contributes to the
latency of the network.
• Ideal Dissemination
Ideal dissemination is one step up from flooding. According to this technique, a
shortest path route is used to send data from the originating node. This approach
guarantees every node will receive every piece of information exactly once. As no
redundancy is there so no energy is wasted in sending or receiving redundant data.
However, the overhead is substantial which is involved in keeping track of the shortest
paths. Apart from this, ideal dissemination does not have technique to identify the nodes
not interested in a particular piece of information.
• SPIN(Sensor Protocols for Information via Negotiation)
SPIN[36] is one of major protocols which are part of a little more sophisticated
family of protocols. With negotiation and resource adaption SPIN addresses the
deficiencies of classic flooding. The problems of implosion are resolved by negotiation
and it also makes sure that useful and desired information is disseminated. Meta data is
being sent with the data by every node in negotiation. And the size of meta data must be
shorter than the data to be sent to improve the efficiency, with condition that meta-data

26
describing two distinguishable pieces of data must be different. Likewise, if two pieces of
data are indistinguishable, they will share the same meta-data. The format of the meta-
data is application specific and not specified by SPIN.
There are three types of messages used by SPIN: 1.ADV 2. REQ 3. DATA. A node first
broadcasts an ADV message whenever a node has data to share. It also contains meta-
data. A neighbor then responds with REQ if it is interested in the advertised data, and in
sent DATA. This method of negotiation ensures that only interested nodes will receive
data. Also ADV and REQ contain only meta-data,they are cheaper to send and receive.
Nodes poll their resources before data transfer to find out how much energy is available.
The resource manager is available at each node to keep track of resource consumption
and to calculate cost of performing computations and sending and receiving data. Using
this information, nodes are able to use their resources effectively.
One implementation of SPIN[36], SPIN-2[36], employs a Low-Energy Threshold[60].
When energy is abundant, the node functions as normal. However, when the resource
manager detects the nodes power supply is reaching the low-energy threshold, the node
with decline to participate in any stage of the protocol if it believes it will not have
enough power to complete the rest of the stages without going below the low-energy
threshold. This prolongs the life of the node and allows it to perform only high priority
functions.
SPIN is a more sophisticated and energy aware schema for data dissemination. It reduces
the amount of energy expended, solves the problems of implosion, overlap, and resource
blindness, and ensures that only interested nodes will expend energy to receive data.

Transport Layer
The transport layer is responsible for communication of a system with the outside world.
This layer is above physical,data link and network layer. It makes end to end kind of
communication between two communicating nodes of a network. Due to unavailability of
global addressing Communication in WSN, linking from the sink to the user is a problem.
In place of that attribute-based naming is used to indicate the destinations of DATA
packets.

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Application Layer
The functionality of this layer is to make the hardware and software of lower layers
transparent to the Sensor Network Management Applications. SMP(sensor management
protocol) is used to address this issue in WSN. The system administrators and
programmers interact with the Sensor Network using SMP. Here also absence of global
identification and infrastructure less nature of sensor networks comes into consideration.
There are following rules, SMP provides to enable interaction between applications and
sensor networks:
• Data aggregation, attribute-based naming, and clustering
• Exchange data related to the location finding algorithms
• Time synchronization
• Moving sensor nodes
• Turning nodes on or off
• Querying WSN configuration status, reconfiguring the WSN
• Authentication, key distribution, and security

2.4 Sensor Node Deployment Strategies

Potential-field-based approach for node deployment is deeply discussed in [3], in which
nodes are treated as virtual particles, subject to virtual forces. These forces repel the
nodes from each other and from obstacles, and ensure that an initial, compact
configuration of nodes will quickly spread out to maximize the coverage area of the
network. In addition to these repulsive forces, nodes are also subject to a viscous friction
force. This force is used to ensure that the network will eventually reach the state of static
equilibrium, i.e. all nodes will ultimately come to Fig.2.4: Protocol stack representation
of the Architecture a complete stop. The viscous force does not, however, prevent the
network from reacting to changes in the environment; if something is moved, the network
will automatically reconfigure itself for the modified environment before return once
again to a static equilibrium. Thus, nodes move only when it is necessary to do so, saving
a great deal of energy. A hybrid approach based on clustering in [39] is used for load
balancing, where the 2-D mesh is partitioned into 1-D arrays by row and by column. Two
scans are used in sequence: one for all rows, followed by the other for all columns.

28
Within each row and columns, the scan operation is used to calculate the average load
and then to determine the amount of overload and under load in clusters. Load is shifted
from overloaded clusters to under load clusters in an optimal way to achieve a balanced
state. Each cluster covers a small square area and is controlled by cluster head, knows the
information about cluster’s position in the 2-D mesh and the number of sensors in the
cluster. Limited motilities based approach is discussed in, where sensor can flip (or hop)
only once to a new location and the flip distance is bounded. In this framework, the
problem is to determine the optimal way for flip based sensors to maximize the coverage
in the network. After detecting the coverage holes, the sensors move to new position to
prevent coverage hole. Such movement can be realized in practice by propellers that are
powered by fuel, coiled springs that unwinds for flipping. In this model, sensors can flip
only once to a new location.
The total force on a node is the sum of all the forces given by other sensors together with
obstacles and preferential coverage in the area. In [50], three protocols are evaluated for
sensor network to maximize the sensor coverage with less time, movement distance and
message complexity. These protocols first discover the existence of coverage holes in the
target area based on the sensing service required by the application. After discovering a
coverage hole, the protocols calculate the target positions of these sensors, where they
should move. These three protocols are VEC (VECtor-based), VOR (VORonoibased) and
Minimax based on the principle of moving sensors from densely deployed areas to
sparsely deployed areas.
For static environment, deterministic deployment is used since the location of each sensor
can be predetermined properly. The stochastic deployment is used when the information
of sensing area is not known in advance or is varied with time, that is the position for
sensor deployment cannot be determined [9, 29]. In [4], a centralized deterministic sensor
deployment method, DT-score is the basis. Given a fixed number of deployable sensors,
DT-score aims to maximize the area coverage of sensing area with obstacles. In the first
phase of DT-score, a contour-based deployment is used to eliminate the coverage holes
near the boundary of sensing area and obstacles. In the second phase, a deployment
method based on the Delaunay Triangulation is applied for uncovered regions. Before

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deploying a sensor, each candidate position generated from the current sensor
configuration is scored by a probabilistic sensor detection model.

2.5 Cross Layer Architecture

2.5.1 Introduction
In wireless sensor network (WSN) one essential feature is a low power consumption of
sensor nodes, that is, small devices equipped with a short range wireless transceiver, a
small processor, and advanced sensing functionalities. Another key requirement for WSN
is a self-configuring capability, the importance of this increase with the size of the
network. In any bigger network at least some of the nodes must also be capable of multi-
hop data transmission despite low memory and computational capacity. There exists
many routing protocols that may function well in ad-hoc networks, but these protocols
cannot be adapted directly to wireless sensor networks. The memory and other
requirements of these protocols are usually too demanding for tiny devices. Most of these
algorithms and networking methods must be taken care in more than one layer. It is
obvious, therefore, that the interaction between layers cannot be ignored. One solution is
that necessary data could be transmitted through service access points (SAP) and
processes the tasks in each OSI layer's Layer Management Entity (LME) section. This
would, however, increase the computational requirements in a protocol stack. For this
reason, it is suggested that some parts of the system responsible for the power saving
characteristics and network management could be implemented in a cross-layer module
working in parallel with the traditional protocol stack.
It is a software architecture where cross-layer management entity and low protocol stack
has been combined. The architecture is aimed for wireless sensor network nodes with
reduced resources.
This cross-layer architecture is versatile and an adaptive solution for WSN nodes with
limited resources. This architecture combines a low protocol stack and a cross-layer
management entity with shared data structures and some special functions.
Figure 2.5 shows the principle of cross-layer architecture in a WSN node. Above the data
link layer, the architecture branches into two parallel areas. The application and the

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protocol stack are responsible for the application-specific data transmission and the cross-
layer management entity takes care of network management. The cross-layer
management entity is further divided into two parts - Management Entity and Shared
Data Structures. The reason why the cross-layer management entity sits on the data link
layer is that in practice it uses the services of the data link layer like multiplexing and
error-free data transmission offered by the link.

2.5.2 Description of Cross-layer Architecture

The messages are divided so that protocol stack handles all data transfer between
applications and the cross-layer entity handles control messages (figure 2.5).The
application uses the services provided by the protocol stack and cross-layer management
entity. The interface between the cross-layer management entity and the protocol
stack/application employs the client/service principle.

Data Cross-layer-management
Application
entity
Protocol stack

M1 M2 Mn

Data Link Layer

Layer Management Entity

Physical Layer
Layer Management Entity

Functions Primitives M1,M2…Mn Modules

Fig.2.5: Sensor network's cross-layer architecture

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2.6 Classification of Routing Protocols for Wireless Sensor Networks
In general, routing in WSNs can be divided into flat-based routing, hierarchical-based
routing, and location-based routing depending on the network structure. In flat-based
routing, all nodes are typically assigned equal roles or functionality. In hierarchical-based
routing, however, nodes will play different roles in the network. In location-based
routing, sensor node positions are exploited to route data in the network. A routing
protocol is considered adaptive if certain system parameters can be controlled in order to
adapt to the current network conditions and available energy levels. Furthermore, these
protocols can be classified into multipath-based, query-based, negotiation-based, or QoS-
based routing techniques depending on the protocol operation. In addition to the above,
routing protocols can be classified into three categories, namely, proactive, reactive, and
hybrid protocols depending on how the source finds a route to the destination. In
proactive protocols, all routes are computed before they are really needed, while in
reactive protocols, routes are computed on demand. Hybrid protocols use a combination
of these two ideas. When sensor nodes are static, it is preferable to have table driven
routing protocols rather than using reactive protocols. A significant amount of energy is
used in route discovery and setup of reactive protocols. Another class of routing protocols
is called the cooperative routing protocols. In cooperative routing, nodes send data to a
central node where data can be aggregated and may be subject to further processing,
hence reducing route cost in terms of energy use. Many other protocols rely on timing
and position information. We use a classification according to the network structure and
protocol operation (routing criteria). Fig.2.6 shows the classification of routing protocols
in WSN.

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 Routing Protocols in WSN

Network Structure Protocols Operation

Flat Hierarchical Location Negotiation Multi-path Query QoS

Network Network Based Based Based Based Based
Routing Routing Routing Routing Routing Routing Routing

SPIN LEACH GEAR SPIN Directed Directed

Directed Protocol GMR Diffusion Diffusion
Diffusion PEGASIS PBM Rumor
Rumor TEEN & MFR,DIR Routing
Routing APTEEN & GEDIR
MCFA MECN
Gradient SOP SPAN
Based VGA
Routing

Figure 2.6 Routing protocols in WSN

Based on the figure 2.6 here are some of the routing protocols of WSN which are
frequently used is discuss in detail:

2.6.1 Sensor Protocols for Information via Negotiation (SPIN)

SPIN is a flat-based network routing protocol. A family of adaptive protocols called
SPIN is designed to address the deficiencies of classic flooding by negotiation and
resource adaptation. The SPIN family of protocols is designed based on two basic ideas:
sensor nodes operate more efficiently and conserve energy by sending data that describe
the sensor data instead of sending the whole data, e.g., image, and sensor nodes must
monitor the changes in their energy resources.

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 ADV REQ DATA

Step 1 Step 2 Step 3

ADV REQ DATA

Step 4 Step 5 Step 6

Figure 2.7: The SPIN Protocol

SPIN has three types of messages, i.e., ADV, REQ, and DATA. Before sending a DATA
message, the sensor broadcasts an ADV (Advertise) message containing a descriptor, i.e.,
meta-data, of the DATA as shown in Step 1 of Fig.2.7. If a neighbor is interested in the
data, it sends a REQ message for the DATA and DATA is sent to this neighbor sensor
node as shown in Steps 2 and 3 of Fig. 2.7 respectively. The neighbor sensor node then
repeats this process as illustrated in Steps 4, 5, and 6 of Fig. 2.7. As a result, the sensor
nodes in the entire sensor network, which are interested in the data, will get a copy.
SPIN is based on data-centric routing where the sensor nodes broadcast an advertisement
for the available data and wait for a request from interested sinks.

2.6.2. Low-Energy adaptive clustering hierarchy (LEACH)

It is a clustering based protocol that minimizes energy dissipation in sensor networks.
Nodes are randomly selected as cluster-heads[46]. The protocol performs periodic
reelection, so that the high energy dissipation experienced by the cluster-heads in
communicating with the BS is spread across all nodes of the network. Each iteration of
selection of cluster heads is called a round. The operation of LEACH is divided into set-
up and steady phases.

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In setup phase, each sensor node chooses a random number between 0 and 1. If this is
lower than the threshold for node n, T(n), the sensor node becomes a cluster head. The
threshold T(n) is calculated as

T(n)= P/{1-P[r mod (1/P)]}

where P is the desired percentage of nodes which are cluster heads, r is the current round,
and G is the set of nodes that has not been cluster-heads in the past 1/P rounds. This
ensures that all sensor nodes eventually spend equal energy. After selection, the cluster-
heads advertise their selection to all nodes. All nodes choose their nearest cluster-head
when they receive advertisements based on the received signal strength. The cluster-
heads then assign a TDMA schedule for their cluster members[46].
The steady phase is of longer duration in order to minimize the overhead of cluster
formation. During the steady phase, data transmission takes place based on the TDMA
schedule, and cluster heads perform data aggregation and /fusion through local
computation. The BS receives only aggregated data from cluster-heads, leading to energy
conservation. After a certain period of time in the steady phase, cluster-heads are selected
gain through the set-up phase.

2.6.3. Directed Diffusion

The directed diffusion data dissemination paradigm is proposed in where the sink sends
out interest, which is a task description, to all sensors as shown in Fig. 2.8(a). The task
descriptors are named by assigning attribute value pairs that describe the task. Each
sensor node then stores the interest entry in its cache[34]. The interest entry contains a
timestamp field and several gradient fields. As the interest is propagated throughout the
sensor network, the gradients from the source back to the sink are set up as shown in Fig.
2.8(b). When the source has data for the interest, the source sends the data along the
interest’s gradient path as shown in Fig. 2.8(c). The interest and data propagation and
aggregation are determined locally. Also, the sink must refresh and reinforce the interest
when it starts to receive data from the source. The directed diffusion is based on data-
centric routing where the sink broadcasts the interest.

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Figure 2.8[34] Directed Diffusion (a) propagate interest,(b) set up gradient and
(c) send data.

2.6.4. Rumor Routing

Rumor routing is a variation of directed diffusion and is mainly intended for applications
where geographic routing is not feasible. In general, directed diffusion uses flooding to
inject the query to the entire network when there is no geographic criterion to diffuse
tasks. However, in some cases there is only a little amount of data requested from the
nodes and thus the use of flooding is unnecessary[42]. An alternative approach is to flood
the events if the number of events is small and the number of queries is large. The key
idea is to route the queries to the nodes that have observed a particular event rather than
flooding the entire network to retrieve information about the occurring events. In order to
flood events through the network, the rumor routing algorithm employs long-lived
packets, called agents. When a node detects an event, it adds such event to its local table,
called events table, and generates an agent. Agents travel the network in order to
propagate information about local events to distant nodes[58]. When a node generates a
query for an event, the nodes that know the route, may respond to the query by inspecting
its event table. Hence, there is no need to flood the whole network, which reduces the
communication cost. On the other hand, rumor routing maintains only one path between
source and destination as opposed to directed diffusion where data can be routed through
multiple paths at low rates. Simulation results showed that rumor routing can achieve

36
significant energy savings when compared to event flooding and can also handle node's
failure. However, rumor routing performs well only when the number of events is small.
For a large number of events, the cost of maintaining agents and event-tables in each
node becomes infeasible if there is not enough interest in these events from the BS.
Moreover, the overhead associated with rumor routing is controlled by different
parameters used in the algorithm such as time-to-live (TTL) pertaining to queries and
agents. Since the nodes become aware of events through the event agents, the heuristic
for defining the route of an event agent highly affects the performance of next hop
selection in rumor routing.

2.6.5. Geographic and Energy Aware Routing (GEAR)

The use of geographic information while disseminating queries to appropriate regions
since data queries often include geographic attributes. The protocol, called Geographic
and Energy Aware Routing (GEAR), uses energy aware and geographically-informed
neighbor selection heuristics to route a packet towards the destination region[60]. The
key idea is to restrict the number of interests in directed diffusion by only considering a
certain region rather than sending the interests to the whole network. By doing this,
GEAR can conserve more energy than directed diffusion.
GEAR was compared to a similar non-energy-aware routing protocol GPSR, which is
one of the earlier works in geographic routing that uses planar graphs to solve the
problem of holes. In case of GPSR, the packets follow the perimeter of the planar graph
to find their route. Although the GPSR approach reduces the number of states a node
should keep, it has been designed for general mobile ad hoc networks and requires a
location service to map locations and node identifiers. GEAR not only reduces energy
consumption for the route setup, but also performs better than GPSR in terms of packet
delivery.

2.7 Position Based Routing

All routing protocols can be classified based on different standards. According to the
network structure, there are flit-based, hierarchical-based and position-based.
Considering protocol operation,these routing algorithms can be classified into query-

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based, negotiation-based, quality of service (QoS)-based. Among these routing protocols,
position-based protocols utilize position information to relay the data to the desired
regions and show the advantage of energy-awareness[36]. Since, there is no addressing
scheme like IP-addresses in position-based routing and they are spatially deployed on a
region, position information can be utilized in routing data in an energy efficient way. For
instance, if the sensed region is known, the query can be limited only in some particular
region to save energy significantly according to the position information of sensor nodes.

2.7.1 Locating sensors

It is obvious that position-based routing protocols require that sensor nodes can
somewhat know their position. Though the position information can be known by
providing sensors with a GPS unit, it is often unfeasible as the GPS is quite expensive
and energy consuming. In order to resolve the locating problem, there are two strategies.
One strategy is to equip a limited subset of nodes with a GPS and then derive the location
of the other ones by means of other techniques. However, commonly available sensor
platforms lack the hardware suitable to acquire location information. The other strategy is
that the sensors locate its position based on the relative position to anchors. The
localization problem has received considerable attention in the past and recently a
number of localization systems have been proposed specifically for sensor networks [12,
13]. Localization algorithms can be divided into two categories: distance-based and
distance-free. Distance-based localization algorithms require the sensors to contain
hardware for measurements. Distance-free localization algorithms do not use radio signal
strengths, angle of arrival of signals or distance measurements and special hardware is
not needed.
About distance-free localization, various techniques have been proposed for measuring
the distances and these techniques can be classified into three subclasses: AOA (Angle of
Arrival) measurements, time related measurements and RSS (Received Signal Strength)
profiling techniques.(1) AOA measurements make use of the receiver antenna’s
amplitude response or phase response to measure the distance. Beamforming is the usual
technology and uses the anisotropy in the reception pattern of an antenna. Koks proposed
to use a minimum of two stationary antennas with known, anisotropic antenna patterns to

38
cope with the varying signal strength problem [14]. Phase interferometry typically
requires a large receiver antenna (relative to the wavelength of the transmitter signal) or
an antenna array based on the phase differences in the arrival of a wave front. The
accuracy of AOA measurements is limited by the directivity of the antenna, shadowing or
by multipath reflections. Another class of AOA measurement methods is based on s
subspace-based algorithms, which require a multi-array antenna in order to form a
correlation matrix using signals received by the array.

2.7.2 Coverage and Connectivity

Coverage and connectivity are two important properties to WSN. Coverage describes
how well sensors in the network can monitor a geographical region in question.
Connectivity simply describes the connectivity properties of the underlying network
topology and it is often desirable that the network is connected. If the network is
partitioned, the sensed data cannot be known by sink and the sensor network is failed.
Connectivity is a fundamental issue in wireless ad hoc environment. Many schemes have
been addressed to conserve energy while maintaining the connectivity, which is also
related to how to construct the minimum connected dominating set problem. Much
research focused on designing energy-efficient distributed algorithms to construct a near
optimal connected dominating set [62]. There has been a lot of research done to address
the coverage problem in WSN. In [29], a centralized heuristic to select mutually
exclusive sensor is designed to cover that independent the network region. In [30], a grid-
based coverage algorithm is proposed in sensor network. A set of sensors can be
deployed on the grid points to monitor the sensor field. The coverage is assumed to be
full if the distance between the grid point and the sensor is less than the detection radius
of the sensor. Otherwise, the coverage is assumed to be ineffective. If any grid point in a
sensor field can be detected by at least one sensor, the field is completely covered. In
[31], node self-scheduling algorithm is proposed. Each node autonomously and
periodically makes decisions on whether to turn on or turn off itself only using local
neighbor information. To preserve sensing coverage, a node decides to turn it off when it
discovers that its neighbors (sponsors) can help it to monitor its whole working area. In
[32],connected sensor coverage algorithm is proposed. The algorithm works by selecting

39
a path (communication path) of sensors that connects an already selected sensor to a
partially covered sensor.The selected path is then added to the already selected sensors at
that stage. The algorithm terminates when the selected set of sensors completely cover
the given query region.

2.7.3 Routing algorithms based on sensor position

Routing in WSN is a key technology and very challenging problem. Many routing
algorithms have been proposed to satisfy the requirement of sensor networks. Based on
the position finding technology, routing algorithms attract more attention since position-
based routing can decrease the complexity of routing and reduce the consumption. To
position-based routing algorithms, it is required that (a) sensors can know its position
according to suitable locating technology; (b) the sensing area is totally covered by
sensors; (c) the connectivity is assured. In this paper, position information also includes
relative position information, such as the hop-number distance.
In this section, the position-based routing algorithms are surveyed and the different
algorithms belonging to different categories are described in detail. Otherwise, the
algorithms are also compared based on some metrics.

Flooding-based routing
Flooding is classical and stateless mechanisms to relay data. In flooding, each sensor
broadcasts receiving packets to all its neighbors. This process does not stop until the
packet reaches the destination or the maximum hop number of the packet is reached.
Although flooding is very easy to implement, it has several drawbacks, such as
implosion, overlap and resource blindness [38]. In order to avoid the broadcast storm
problem, different methods are proposed to limit the naïve flooding.Random flooding is
one of improved flooding. In random flooding, sensors first receive a packet and then
transmit the packet to all its neighbors with probability p. Other same packets are
ignored. Based on random flooding idea, Braginsky David et al. [42] proposed rumor
routing algorithm, which can be an alternative of naïve flooding. The basic idea of rumor
routing can be described as follows: (1). When an event is occurred in a region of the
network, sensing nodes create some event agents and propagate them along the network.

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Figure 2.9: Flooding based routing(random)[38] Figure 2.10:Flooding(aggrigate path)[38]

Each node randomly forwards event agents to a neighbor, shown as Figure.2.9. When
event agent propagating the path to Event 2 comes across a path to Event 1, it begins to
propagate the aggregate path to both, shown as Figure.2.10. Each event agent has an
event table containing the original event and every event visited in the trajectory. When
an event agent meets a node, sensors’ event table is updated by the event agent. In order
to join the path, the query agent is created and propagated along random path. Later
queries can be routed along these agent-generated paths. It has been proved that the paths
created by query and event agents have a very high possibility to intersect. The problem
in rumor routing is that the forwarding of agent is random. So, it is possible that the paths
of agents are too long. If the number of agents is large, the energy consumption is too
much.

Curve-based routing
CBR (curve-based routing) is regarded as a hybrid technique combining source based
routing [49] and Cartesian forwarding [43]. CBR is also similar to TBF (trajectory based
forwarding). First, CBR is initiated by the source, which is similar to source based
routing, but without specifying all the intermediate nodes. Second, in CBR, each sensor

41
takes greedy action to forward the packet, which is similar to Cartesian forwarding, based
on the distance to the predefined curve. The basic idea of CBR can be described as
follows [49]: (1) a source node selects a suitable curve and encodes the curve into each
packet; (2) upon receiving the packets, intermediate nodes decode the curve and use
greedy strategies to decide next-hop to be forwarded and construct dynamic forwarding
tables (DFT); (3) the sequent packets can be forwarded according to the constructed
DFT; (4) after sending a number of packets, sources select another curve and forward
packets along this curve. According to the basic CBR idea, the whole routing process can
be described briefly as follows: The source (S) selects a suitable curve and encodes it into
the packets. Then intermediate nodes select one node as next-hop in its neighbors
according to greedy strategies and construct DFT. The sequent packets can be forwarded
by lookup DFT. The intermediate nodes will record the number of forwarded packets and
tell its previous hop node (PH), such as M, to select another node, Q, to replace it. If M
can’t find a suitable node according to the greedy strategy, it will send a special packet to
inform S to select another curve to forward packets. After sending a number of packets
along curve C1, S selects another curve, C2, to forward packets. These curves can be
selected evenly in exploring area to balance the energy consumption of nodes effectively.

Grid-based routing
Grid-based routing algorithms use grid as the basic routing infrastructure. Considering
different characteristics of networks, different grid construction methods have been
proposed. In [49], grid location service (GLS) is proposed for Ad Hoc routing where the
nodes are totally mobile. In [49], two-tier data dissemination (TTDD) grid is constructed
for large-scale WSN where multiple sinks are mobile. In [49], a virtual grid (VG) is
constructed for routing in WSN where all sensors are static. In grid-based routing
algorithms, how to construct and maintain the grid is the key problem.

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Ant algorithm-based intelligent routing
Compared with the previous position-based routing algorithms, ant algorithm-based
intelligentrouting algorithms are complicated. It is found that the ants have the ability of
finding the best route between ant’s cave and food via detecting the pheromone, which is
the original idea to design ant algorithm. In travel, the shorter the path is, the higher the
pheromone concentration is, so ants can find right field in searching space using positive
feedback mechanism. As social insects, ants can show a colony intelligent behavior via
cooperation while carrying out some tasks that can’t be finished by the individual. Ant
algorithms are used to solve not only the TSP problem, but also the anycast routing and
query processing problems and so on .Combined with the idea of ant algorithm and
position information, ant algorithm-based intelligent routing algorithms have been
proposed successively for WSN [62]. In order to set up the routing, each source node
sends several detection packets (ants) to the sink node. Each ant packet has the following
information: the visited list, the edge list and the position of the sink. The visited list is
used to record the nodes, which have been passed by ants, and the initial value of it is
empty. The edge list is used to record the edges ant selected when detecting. Each node
maintains a table including the position information of their neighbor nodes, which can
be updated by hello messages between neighbor nodes periodically. Each of the source
nodes can obtain the position information of the sink by receiving the interests the sink
flooded and generate the ants.

2.8 Summary
In this chapter the detail study about wireless sensor networks architecture and the
routing protocol in WSN is done. We also explained various routing challenges and
design issues in WSNs. Starting from two basic kinds of sensor network architectures
classified as layered and clustered architecture we explained cross layer architecture.
This chapter gives details of OSI based Sensor network architecture in which all five
layers with three parallel plane get explained.
Classification of Routing Protocols for Wireless Sensor Networks is also done in which
details of few important protocol is given. At the end of chapter position based routing is

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eloberated with four flavours of routing classified as flooding based,curve based ,grid
based and ant algorithm based routing.

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