Master Thesis Proposal - UCCS



Master Thesis Proposal

Wireless Sensor Network Coverage: Managing Power, Critical Time Period, Coverage Efficiency

Sidney I. Rubey

1. Committee Members and Signatures:

Approved by Date

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Advisor: Dr. C. Edward Chow

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Committee member: Dr. Terrance Boult

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Committee member: Dr. X. Joe Zhou

2. Introduction

Wireless sensors are small electronic devices, ranging in size from a small coin to a matchbox, which have been designed, built, and programmed as stand-alone sensors, electronically transmitting their data to other sensors which is ultimately collected at a main station called a sink, or base station. The devices sense a range of phenomena: light, heat, magnetic fields are but a few examples.

The devices consist on a component level of a sensing element, power source, central processor, receiver and transmitter. Many wireless sensors deployed and activated will self-organize themselves into an efficient network with a collection point of data at the base station, or base stations. To reduce the network traffic and hence conserve the battery power, routing protocols direct that data is collected at one of the sensors, and that sensor will transmit one aggregate transmission for more efficient network traffic. This process is called data fusion. [1]

Wireless sensors have been developed for many applications: stress measurement in reasonably inaccessible support locations in building, environmental monitoring in remote locations, military applications. The sensors are either physically placed in their sensing location, or they may be randomly dispersed, as from being dropped from an airplane or helicopter. Because the sensors are built to operate as standalone devices in inaccessible locations, their power management system is a critical issue in the operation of wireless sensor networks. Another critical issue in the operation of wireless sensors is what sensing range of the sensor and what nodes in the network need to be awake in order to guarantee a certain degree of sensing range coverage for a system. As a tradeoff to minimizing power consumption, and thus exhausting the sensor’s batteries, a system requirement may be that the system operates for a minimum time period. Typically, this time period would be in the magnitude of several weeks to one year. [2], [3], [4], [5], [6]

This thesis will address these important issues together. Typical power consumption levels, sensing ranges, a minimum required operating time will be integrated in a simulation tool, IPTS System, Integrating Power, Time, Sensors in Wireless Sensor Networks. The simulation tool will monitor critical data necessary in determining optimal wireless sensor network operation.

There are several network simulators that can be enhance for the proposed research. NS2 is a popular generic network simulator with some wireless sensor simulators [8]. TOSSIM and TinyViz that come with TinyOS software package contain a simulator for wireless sensors using TinyOS operating system [9]. Jeff Rupp in his CS526 semester project extended TinyViz to simulate obstruction of radio signals. [7]

3. Thesis Plan

The largest deliverable of this project will be the simulation tool, IPTS System, and its documentation.

Extensive research is to be conducted into the critical aspects of power management techniques of wireless sensors, and coverage aspects. Parameters that will have to be considered in power consumption algorithms and coverage algorithms are:

• Full power capacity of battery

• Number of sensors in network

• Area to be monitored by wireless sensor network

• Power consumed by various components of the sensor in a variety of operating modes; i.e., sleep mode, standby mode, active sensing mode, transmitting and receiving

• Sensing range

• Transmission range

• Required time of operation of network

3.1 Tasks:

• Use software development principles to complete development of IPTS System, which will include user’s manual and all pertinent design documentation

• Research the power statistics for a variety of commercially available wireless sensors; these statistics to be used for typical power consumption levels in sensor operation

• Use research to develop algorithms for power consumption, area coverage, network time-to-live values

• Complete implementation of IPTS System

• Complete thesis paper

• Prepare presentation of thesis

• Defend thesis

3.2 Deliverables:

• The simulation tool, IPTS System, with user manual, and the design and implementation documentation, which will take into account required coverage percentage, power levels, or minimum duration of network operation.

• A thesis report documenting the design and implementation of IPTS System, related algorithms, the analysis of findings, and the lessons learned in the thesis, and future work to be done.

4.0 References

1. Rubey, S. I. and Lear, Thomas, “Applications for Wireless Sensor Networks In the War on Terrorism”, University of Colorado at Colorado Springs CS526 Semester Project, December, 2003, pp. 3-8,

2. Meguerdichian, S., Koushanfar, F., Potkonjak, M., Srivastava, M., “Coverage Problems in Wireless Ad-hoc Sensor Networks”, IEEE Infocom 2001, Vol. 3, pp. 1380-1387, April 2001,

3. Biagioni, E., Sasaki, G., “Wireless Sensor Placement for Reliable and Efficient Data Collection”, Proceedings of the 36th Annual Hawaii International Conference on System Sciences (HICSS'03) - Track 5 - Volume 5, 2003, pp. 127.2,

4. Sinha, A., and Chandrakasan, A. P., “Dynamic Power Management in Wireless Sensor Networks”, IEEE Design & Test, Volume 18, Issue 2 (March 2001), pp. 62-74,

5. Slijepcevic, S., and Potkonjak, M., “Power Efficient Organization of Wireless Sensor Networks”, IEEE International Conference on Communications (ICC'01), Helsinki, Finland, June 2001, pp. 472-476,

6. Bhardwaj, M., Garnett, T., Chandrakasan, A. P., “Upper Bounds on the Lifetime of Sensor Networks”, IEEE International Conference on Communications (ICC'01), Helsinki, Finland, June 2001, pp. 785-790,

7. Jeff Rupp, “Using TinyViz to simulate Obstructed Radio Signal” CS526 Semester Project Report,

8. The Network Simulator - ns-2,

9. TinyViz and TOSSIM,

10. Xiaorui Wang, Guoliang Xing, Yuanfang Zhang, Chenyang Lu, Robert Pless, Christopher Gill, Integrated Coverage and Connectivity Configuration in Wireless Sensor Networks, Conference On Embedded Sensor Network Systems, Los Angeles, CA., 2003, pp. 28-39,

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