Overview of Wireless Networks: Cellular Mobile Ad hoc Sensor

Cellular Architecture - Infrastructure-based networks - All units are fixed in location except mobile units - BS and MSC are connected via wirelines - Communication between BS and mobile unit is wireless WIRE-LINE NETWORK Base Station (BS) Cell Wireless Links Wired Links Mobile Switching Center (MSC) Mobile unit

Why Mobile Ad hoc Networks? Characteristics - Infrastructure-less - All nodes are potentially mobile - Network topology is dynamic - All nodes act as individual routers Examples - Disaster recovery situations - Battle field communications - Law enforcement operations - Civilian applications Objectives - Maintain connectivity between mobile devices - Provide congestion-free routing for multimedia traffic - Support scalability - Minimize memory, bandwidth and energy consumption

Mobile Ad hoc Networks (MANET) transmission range

Hybrid Environments Use infrastructure when convenient Use ad hoc connectivity when necessary or superior infrastructure BS1 BS2 E A Z Ad hoc connectivity X © 2001 Nitin Vaidya

Variations Symmetric environments Asymmetric capabilities Nodes having identical capabilities and responsibilities Asymmetric capabilities Transmission ranges Processing power Battery lifetime Mobility speed Asymmetric responsibilities Some nodes may forward route packages Leaders vs. ordinary nodes May co-exist (and collaborate) with an infrastructure-based network

Variations Traffic characteristics Mobility Patterns Bit rate Timeliness constraints Reliability requirements Mobility Patterns Students on campus Passengers on airports Taxi cabs Mobility Characteristics Speed / Direction / Pattern of movement

Sensor Networks Wireless sensor networks consists of group of sensor nodes to perform distributed sensing task using wireless medium. Characteristics - low-cost, low-power, lightweight - densely deployed - prone to failures - two ways of deployment: randomly, pre-determined or engineered Objectives - Monitor activities - Gather and fuse information - Communicate with global data processing unit

Sensor Networks Military: Environmental: Health: Application Areas [Akyildiz+ 2002] Military: Monitoring equipment and ammunition Battlefield surveillance and damage assessment Nuclear, biological, chemical attack detection and reconnaissance Environmental: Forest fire / flood detection Health: Tracking and monitoring doctors and patients inside a hospital Drug administration in hospitals

Sensor Networks Home: Other Commercial Applications: Application Areas [Akyildiz+ 2002] Home: Home automation Smart environment Other Commercial Applications: Environmental control in office buildings Detecting and monitoring car thefts Managing inventory control Vehicle tracking and detection

Sensor Networks vs. Traditional Wireless Networks (Cellular, MANET) Higher number of sensor nodes (several orders of magnitude) Dense deployment Prone to failures Limited in power, computation and memory May not have global identification (ID) due to high overhead and the total number of sensors Optimization on the energy consumption vs. QoS and high bandwidth constraints Stationary vs. mobile Data flow: unidirectional vs. bi-directional Date rates

Sensor Networks Preliminaries For large scale environment monitoring applications, dense sensor networks are mainly used Sensing capabilities should be distributed and coordinated amongst the sensor nodes Algorithms deployed should be localized since transmissions between large distances are expensive and lowers networks life time These networks should be self-configuring, scalable, redundant and robust during topology changes

Current Challenges Limited wireless transmission range Broadcast nature of the wireless medium Packet losses due to transmission errors Mobility-induced route changes Mobility-induced packet losses Battery constraints Potentially frequent network partitions Ease of snooping on wireless transmissions (security hazard)

Research Problems in Ad hoc and Sensor Networks Clustering Partitioning of the network Identification of vital nodes (clusterheads) Routing Discovering routes from source to destination Maintaining the routes Rediscovery and repair of routes Topology management Maintain the links Minimize the changes in underlying graph Security

Research Problems in Ad hoc and Sensor Networks Medium Access Control Protocols Sensor data management Power conservation/energy consumption Data fusion and dissemination of sensor data New applications for ad hoc and sensor networks

References [Akyildiz+ 2002] I. F. Akyildiz, W. Su, Y. Sankarasubramaniam, and E. Cayirci, A Survey on Sensor Networks, IEEE Communications Magazine, Vol. 40, No. 8, pp. 102-114, August 2002.