In-Cave Wireless Communication

Chapter 1 INTRODUCTION

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In-Cave Wireless Communication

Here we concentrate on robust voice communication architecture for caves based on wireless multimedia sensor networks. Although the outdoor use of radio frequencies (RF) for communication has been a very ingrained and convenient technique for a quite long time, indoor environments make the use of RF signals for communication difficult because of attenuation, reflection, refraction, diffraction and scattering that have negative effect on RF signals. In caves, obstacles such as walls, rocks and curvatures with rough surfaces amplify the negative effects of the mentioned distortions on the RF signals, making wireless voice communication especially difficult. This architecture aims to overcome these difficulties by use of a Wireless Multimedia Sensor Network (WMSN) with densely deployed backbone nodes and scattered mobile nodes, so RF communication between mobile nodes over the backbone can guarantee a desired level of uninterrupted connectivity and communication quality.

There are some different types of cable-based systems used for in-cave communication. One of them is known as single-wire telephone (SWT). The SWT, also known as earth-return telephone, uses the conductivity of the ground to provide a return path for the current. So, only one core cable is used in SWT, which reduces the weight of the cable by fifty percent. In caves, both coaxial and single core copper cables become bulky to handle especially with increased cable lengths. Therefore more weight efficient solutions for in-cave communication are preferred. One such solution is the use of optical fibers. Optical fibers weigh less, have greater bandwidth and noise immunity compared to copper cables which tend to pick up random noise from the environment with longer cable lengths.

Although noise and cable weight problems can be compensated with the use of optical fibers, there are still problems associated with the installation of these cable based communication network within caves. Caves with multiple paths require the cables to be split into multiple branches and each branch requires a connection to the main cable. These connections can be made relatively easily with copper cables but each new connection has negative effect on the communication quality. On the other hand, connecting optical fibers together is a highly skilled task and requires the use of special hardware. Therefore, we concentrate on WMSN based architecture for in-cave communication which is basically composed of densely deployed backbone nodes and scattered mobile nodes. That gives rise to In-Cave Wireless Communication System (ICWCS).

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Chapter 2

WIRELESS MULTIMEDIA SENSOR NETWORK

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In-Cave Wireless Communication

Wireless sensor networks have drawn the attention of the research community in the past few years. This growing interest can be largely credited to new applications enabled by large-scale networks. Small devices are capable of harvesting information from the physical environment, performing simple processing on the extracted data, and transmitting it to remote locations. Most deployed wireless sensor networks measure scalar data such as temperature, pressure, humidity, or the location of objects. In general, most of the applications have low bandwidth demands and are usually delay tolerant. While the traditional wireless sensor networks consist of low-bandwidth sensors with limited capabilities, camera sensor networks can provide visual verification, in-depth situational awareness, recognition, and other capabilities.

In recent years, wireless sensor networks have inspired tremendous research interest in diverse application fields such as structural health monitoring, environmental monitoring, and military and security surveillance. A typical wireless sensor network

consists of sensor nodes, each equipped with various kinds of sensors, deployed over a geographical region of interest. Most of the applications are centered towards harvesting information from the physical environment, performing a simple processing on the extracted data and transmitting it to remote locations.

A new direction in wireless sensor network application design centers on the idea of enabling the network to learn the behavior of the trend in the environment rather than merely making measurements and reporting about a single event or information of interest. A Wireless Multimedia Sensor Network (WMSN) is defined as a network of wireless embedded devices that allow retrieving video or audio streams, still images, and scalar sensor data. A WMSN ties the notion of wireless sensor networks and distributed smart cameras . Wireless multimedia sensor networks will not only enhance existing sensor network applications such as tracking, home automation, and environmental monitoring, but they will also enable several new applications such as multimedia surveillance sensor networks.

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In-Cave Wireless Communication

2.1 NETWORK COMPONENTS

Components to build a WMSN can be very expensive and difficult to work with or program due to the complicated algorithms and required hardware construction. We had to decide on the type of microprocessor to use to run our node along with a camera with good resolution that could capture effective images. Considered two microprocessor

modules: the ARM7 microprocessor and the Overo Air computer-on-module. The Overo seemed like a better choice due to its extensive wireless capabilities that the ARM7 did not have. Camera module that supports the Overo Air computer-on-module. It connects to the Overo Air through a J5 flex circuit cable connector, making it simpler to communicate between the two devices. Major components of network are: Standard Audio and Video sensors Scalar sensors Multiple processing hubs Storage hubs Sink Gateway Users

2.2 NETWORK ARCHITECTURE

The problem of designing a scalable network architecture is of primary importance. Most proposals for wireless sensor networks are based on a flat, homogenous architecture in which every sensor has the same physical capabilities and can only interact with neighboring sensors. Traditionally, the research on algorithms and protocols for sensor networks has focused on scalability, i.e., how to design solutions whose applicability would not be limited by the growing size of the network. Flat topologies may not always be suited to handle the amount of traffic generated by multimedia applications including audio and video. Likewise, the processing power required for data processing and communications, and the power required to operate it, may not be available on each node.

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In-Cave Wireless Communication

Fig. 2.1 Reference

architecture of a wireless multimedia sensor network

In Fig. 2.1 Architecture for WMSNs, where three sensor networks with different characteristics are shown, possibly deployed in different physical locations. The first cloud on the left shows a single-tier network of homogeneous video sensors. A subset of the deployed sensors have higher processing capabilities, and are thus referred to as processing hubs. The union of the processing hubs constitutes a distributed processing architecture. The multimedia content gathered is relayed to a wireless gateway through a multi-hop path. The gateway is interconnected to a storage hub, that is in charge of storing multimedia content locally for subsequent retrieval. Clearly, more complex architectures for distributed storage can be implemented when allowed by the environment and the application needs, which may result in energy savings since by storing it locally, the multimedia content does not need to be wirelessly relayed to remote locations. The wireless gateway is also connected to a central sink, which implements the software front-end for network querying and tasking. The second cloud represents a single-tiered clustered architecture of heterogeneous sensors (only one cluster is depicted). Video, audio, and scalar sensors relay data to a central cluster head, which is also in charge of performing intensive multimedia processing on the data (processing hub). The cluster head relays the gathered content to the wireless gateway and to the storage hub.

The last cloud on the right represents a multi-tiered network, with heterogeneous sensors. Each tier is in charge of a subset of the functionalities. Resourceconstrained, low-power scalar sensors are in charge of performing simpler tasks, such as detecting scalar physical measurements, while resource-rich, high-power devices are responsible for more complex tasks. Data processing and storage can be performed in a distributed fashion at each different tier.
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In-Cave Wireless Communication

Chapter 3 SENSOR NODES ARCHITECTURE

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In-Cave Wireless Communication A wireless sensor node is composed of four basic components. A sensing unit, a processing unit (microcontroller), a transceiver unit and a power unit . In addition to the above units, a wireless sensor node may include a number of application specific components, for example a location detection system or mobiliser; for this reason, many commercial sensor node products include expansion slots and support serial wired communication.

Fig: 3.1 Sensor Node Architecture

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In-Cave Wireless Communication

Components of a Wireless Sensor Node: Sensing Unit:

A sensor is a device that measures some physical quantity and converts it into a signal to be processed by the microcontroller. A wide range of sensor types exist including seismic, thermal, acoustic, visual, infrared and magnetic. Sensors may be passive (sensing without active manipulation of the environment) or active (using active manipulation/probing of the environment to sense data, e.g. radar) and may be directional or omni-directional. A wireless sensor node may include multiple sensors providing complimentary data. The sensing of a physical quantity such as those described typically results in the production of a continuous analogue signal, for this reason, a sensing unit is typically composed of a number of sensors and an analogue to digital convertor (ADC) which digitises the signal.

Microcontroller:
A microcontroller provides the processing power for, and coordinates the activity of, a wireless sensor node. Unlike the processing units associated with larger computers, a microcontroller integrates processing with some memory provision and I/O peripherals; such integration reduces the need for additional hardware, wiring, energy and circuit board space. In addition to the memory provided by the microcontroller, it is not uncommon for a wireless sensor node to include some external memory, for example in the form of flash memory.

Transceiver:
A transceiver unit allows the transmission and reception of data to other devices connecting a wireless sensor node to a network. Wireless sensor nodes typically communicate using an RF (radio frequency) transceiver and a wireless personal area

network technology such as Bluetooth or the 802.15.4 compliant protocols ZigBee [2] and MiWi [3]. The 802.15.4 standard specifies the physical layer and medium access control for low-rate, low-cost wireless communications whilst protocols such as ZigBee and MiWi build

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In-Cave Wireless Communication upon this by developing the upper layers of the OSI Reference Model. The Bluetooth specification crosses all layers of the OSI Reference Model and is also designed for low-rate, low-cost wireless networking. Wireless sensor communications tend to operate in the RF industrial, scientific and medical (ISM) bands which are designed for unlicensed operation.

Power Source:
As an untethered computing platform, wireless sensor nodes must be supported by a power unit which is typically some form of storage (that is, a battery) but may be supported by power scavenging components (for example, solar cells). Energy from power scavenging techniques may only be stored in rechargeable (secondary) batteries and this can be a useful combination in wireless sensor node environments where maintenance operations like battery changing are impractical. To conserve energy a power unit may additionally support power conservation techniques such as dynamic voltage scaling.

ENERGY ISSUES

For the two different types of wireless sensor nodes employed in ICWCS, two different types of batteries were used according to the power requirements of the nodes. Backbone nodes are stationary and they must be operational for long periods of time, so they are equipped with high capacity batteries. On the other hand mobile nodes are equipped with batteries of lesser capacity for making them more portable. Also spare batteries can be carried by the users to extend the standard standby and operational time. In our current design, ICWCS backbone nodes were powered with 12V, 1.3Ah batteries which provide a little more than 7 days of continuous operation. The mobile nodes were equipped with three rechargeable 1.2V, 700mAh AAA size batteries which provide nodes thirty hours of continuous operation

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Chapter 4

ICWCS NODES

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In-Cave Wireless Communication The basic purpose of ICWCS is to provide a reliable voice communication channel over a WMSN between the members of a team in a cave as shown in Fig. 1. ICWCS consists of two different types of nodes. The skeleton of this network is formed by backbone nodes which are mounted on the walls of the cave. Mobile nodes, which have similar functionality like cellular phones, are carried by the team members.

4.1 BACKBONE NODES

Backbone nodes are stationary nodes and their design is based on our previous general purpose wireless sensor node VF1A . They have a processor module, an RF transceiver module, a memory module and a power management module. These nodes are responsible for maintaining the backbone connectivity within the cave, the registration and roaming activities of mobile nodes, routing call information between mobile nodes, and carrying the control and voice data over the wireless network shown in Fig 4.1

Fig: 4.1 Backbone Node Structure

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4.2 MOBILE NODES

Mobile nodes are carried by cavers and include features beyond the standard ones of a wireless sensor node for the interaction with the cavers. These features include a graphical display, a microphone, an earphone and a control keypad. A mobile node is an Internet-connected device whose location and point of attachment to the Internet may frequently be changed. This kind of node is often a cellular telephone or handheld or laptop computer, although a mobile node can also be a router. Special support is required to maintain Internet connections for a mobile node as it moves from one network or subnet to another, because traditional Internet routing assumes a device will always have the same IP address. Therefore, using standard routing procedures, a mobile user would have to change the device's IP address each time they connected through another network or subnet. Since mobility and ease of connection are crucial considerations for mobile device users, organizations that want to promote mobile communications are putting a great deal of effort into making mobile connection and uncomplicated for the user. The graphical display is used to inform the user about the current status of the mobile node which includes RF signal strength, remaining battery capacity, connected backbone node. The control keypad is used to manage both incoming and outgoing voice calls. The design of the mobile nodes is also based on VF1A, but as stated above has some extra features. Also for digitizing and playing back of voice a low power codec was added to the design of VF1A.

4.3 NODES NETWORK

In wireless sensor networks, nodes lack a global id like an IP address in legacy networks, therefore a simple yet efficient method for addressing nodes is required. VF1A sensor nodes have a unique 64-bit id which was used for the identification and addressing of the nodes in ICWCS. Each mobile node and thus its user are registered to the ICWCS directory server, which stores the ids of the backbone and mobile nodes, usernames, status and location information of the mobile nodes. The information stored in the directory server is used for establishing real time communication between online users, monitoring and detecting battery related connection failures, and to narrow the reconnaissance area in the case of a rescue operation within the cave.

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Fig: 4.2 Node Network

Each backbone node also registers itself to the ICWCS directory server for backbone network monitoring. Status information including remaining battery capacity of backbone nodes will be sent to the directory service periodically. The directory service is usually run on a computer outside the cave, but to accelerate directory operations, backbone nodes employ a caching mechanism. The information within the cache of the backbone nodes is updated periodically.

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In-Cave Wireless Communication

Chapter 5

ICWCS OPERATION

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In-Cave Wireless Communication Several steps including deployment, initial setup and routing, Node call registration, call management and broken link and recovery must be performed before an ICWCS becomes operational. The details of these steps are given in the following Sub topics.

5.1 DEPLOYMENT

Wireless sensor networks can be deployed either manually or randomly. In ICWCS, the backbone nodes are required to be deployed manually as the cavers move along the cave farther. Each backbone node has a simple RSSI indicator, which shows the connection quality to the last deployed backbone node, so the user has the opportunity to place the backbone node at an optimum distance to the last backbone node. This way a dynamic backbone network is deployed within the cave as the cavers move forward.

5.2 INITIAL SETUP AND ROUTING

Whenever a new backbone node is permanently laid out, the updated topology information is exchanged between the backbone nodes and then sent to the directory service. When updating topology information, the backbone nodes exchange their routing tables to recalculate the next hop to every other backbone node. For the routing protocol we preferred to employ a simplified link state routing algorithm which is suitable for wireless sensor networks because of its low message overhead .This way all backbone nodes know how to reach a particular backbone node and thus its registered mobile nodes. A sample routing table exchange operation is given. The age column in the routing table is used to detect the dead backbone nodes in the network. When a backbone node does not receive data from a neighboring backbone node within a predefined timeout, the value of the corresponding age column is decremented by one. An age column with a value of zero indicates a dead neighbor backbone node. Table 2 shows the final routing table of backbone node BN4 for the network given.

5.3 MOBILE NODE REGISTRATION

Each mobile node must register itself to the ICWCS network to become operational. When a mobile node is powered on, it broadcasts a registration request message in order to register itself to the ICWCS directory service. The backbone nodes that receive registration message initiate a directory service lookup for the verification of the identity

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In-Cave Wireless Communication of the mobile node. Upon receiving a positive reply regarding the identity of the mobile node, the backbone nodes acknowledge this registration request back to the mobile node. In cases where more than one positive acknowledgement is received by the mobile node, the mobile node decides which backbone node to register with using the RSSI functionality.

5.4 CALL MANAGEMENT

A mobile node can retrieve a list of the online users within the ICWCS network and show this information to the user on its graphical display. The retrieved list of the online users can be a partial list when the ICWCS network is in the beaconing state and the backbone node does not have access to the connection table on the directory service or a full list when the directory service is accessible. Users can then select any of the online users, and initiate a voice communication with that user. The id of the selected destination users mobile node is sent to the registered backbone node to forward the call request to the destination mobile node. If the user of the destination node accepts the incoming call request, a voice communication channel between the source and the destination mobile node is established. Otherwise a negative acknowledgement is returned to the source mobile node. The current Mobile Node connection table of the network on the directory service is shown

Table 1 Initial Routing Setup

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Table: 2 Final Routing Table

Table: 3 MN Connection Table

5.5 BROKEN LINK DETECTION AND RECOVERY

When a backbone node becomes dead, the backbone network will be broken unless the two immediate upstream and downstream neighbors of the dead backbone node can establish a direct connection. In this case, the ICWCS enters the beaconing state. In this state, the operation of the dead backbone node should be resumed by either replacing the batteries or the node itself. Each backbone node uses the age column in its routing table to detect whether the beaconing state should be entered. After each successful communication with the neighboring backbone nodes, each backbone node updates the corresponding age values with the predefined timeout value. Whenever the value in an age column becomes zero this indicates that no successful communication has occurred within the timeout period, so the backbone node concludes that the corresponding backbone node is dead. In the beaconing state, the detecting upstream and downstream backbone nodes broadcast a
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In-Cave Wireless Communication warning message to all online mobile nodes and the directory server. This way, still reachable users get notified about this network failure. The backbone nodes which forward the broadcast message delete the entry for the failed backbone node from their routing table. After the dead backbone node is replaced, the new backbone node advertises its presence to the neighboring backbone nodes, which triggers the regeneration of the routing tables over the ICWCS backbone network. When a connection is established between mobile nodes, the participating backbone nodes save an entry in their caches to accelerate future call establishment to these mobile nodes. With this caching mechanism, future calls to the cached mobile nodes will not require an interaction with the directory server, unless the mobile node has roamed to another backbone node.

Additionally when no connection to the directory server is available, the mobile nodes may still be able to communicate with the other reachable mobile nodes, unless they have changed their registered backbone node. Assuming that the mobile nodes MN2 and MN3 in Fig. 5.4.1 have established a connection over the time and the backbone node BN4 has cached the ids of MN2 and MN3, MN2 can still establish a new connection to MN3 even if BN1 becomes dead, which would have normally prevented querying the directory service for the location of MN3.

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Chapter 6
FEATURES, TECNOLOGIES OF WMSNs

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Multimedia in-network processing in WMSNs:

Distributed source coding in WMSNs Multimedia aggregation and fusion in WMSNs Low-bit rate and energy-efficient multimedia source coding for WMSNs

WMSN architectures and applications:

Scalable and flexible WMSN architecture WMSN design for supporting heterogenous applications Multimedia sensor coverage Novel WMSN applications Experimental studies of WMSNs WMSN modelling and performance analysis

Emerging WMSN technologies:

Hardware platforms Physical layer technologies Energy harvesting technologies

Effective and energy-efficient protocols for WMSNs:

Real-time and reliable multimedia streaming Routing and medium access control Topology control and synchronisation protocols Energy efficient traffic management QoS provisioning protocols

Cross-layer design in WMSNs:

Joint multimedia processing and communication Cooperative communication for multimedia delivery Effective cross-layer communication protocols Joint optimisation for WMSN design

Data management for WMSNs:

In-network and distributed storage techniques for WMSNs Lightweight multimedia encoding techniques Collaborative in-network processing Energy-efficient DBMS for WMSNs

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ADVANTAGES, DISADVANTAGES OF WMSNs

ADVANTAGES:
The availability of low-cost hardware such as CMOS cameras and microphones has fostered the development of Wireless Multimedia Sensor Networks (WMSNs), i.e., networks of wirelessly interconnected devices that are able to ubiquitously retrieve multimedia content such as video and audio streams, still images, and scalar sensor data from the environment. The state of the art in algorithms, protocols, and hardware for wireless multimedia sensor network are easily designable in multimedia environments.

Currently off-the-shelf hardware as well as available research prototypes for multimedia sensor networks are possible with cross-layer synergies and optimizations.

.DISADVANTAGES: Must put powerful protection to protect your connection in case somewhere between your laptop & WiFi, there is a hacker steals your WiFi connection, resulting the WiFi range reduction .Must put powerful protection to protect your data in case somewhere between your laptop & WiFi, there is a hacker steals your data, resulting your firewall/antivirus must work extra to encrypt the data to check and then decrypt it again before theencryption software opens it

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Conclusion
Here we focused on building a reliable voice communication network with the use of wireless multimedia sensor nodes in RF challenged indoor environments. We have designed wireless multimedia sensor nodes based on our previous researches. Two different types of wireless sensor nodes were designed based on the design of our previous sensor node. One sensor node design was used as the backbone nodes of the ICWCS and the other one with multimedia features was used as the mobile nodes.

Our current implementation of ICWCS handles only one active point to point voice communication. We can Still look to improve the work on the concurrent voice communications with multicast and broadcast capabilities to improve the performance of ICWCS.

Reliable voice communication can be provided by WMSN in RF challenged indoor environment. Two different types of sensor nodes were used, their design was based on VF1A sensor node. This ICWCS is a point-to-point communication, it is being improved to have multicast and broadcastc abilities

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9. Mangharam, R., Rowe, A., Rajkumar, R., Suzuki, R., "Voice over Sensor Networks", Real-Time Systems Symposium, 2006. (RTSS '06), IEEE Press, Dec. 2006, pp. 291 302, doi: 10.1109/RTSS.2006.51 10. .Brunelli, D., Teodorani, L., "Improving audio streaming over multi-hop ZigBee networks", Computers and Communications, 2008 (ISCC 2008), IEEE Press, Jul. 2008, pp. 31 - 36, doi: 10.1109/ISCC.2008.4625771. 11. Wang C., Sohraby K., Jana R., Ji L., Daneshmand M.. "Voice communications over zigbee networks" Communications Magazine, IEEE, vol. 46(1), Jan. 2008, pp. 121 - 127, doi: 10.1109/MCOM.2008.4427240.
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