ADHOC ASSIGNMENT 1 ANSWER

1. Explain the types of Wireless Ad Hoc Networks with its

issues, routing, multicasting.
Issues in Ad hoc wireless networks
 The major issues that affect the design, deployment, and
performance of an ad hoc
wireless system are as follows:
 Medium Access Control (MAC)
 Routing
 Multicasting
 Transport layer protocol
 Quality of Service (QOS)
 Self-organization
 Security
 Energy management
 Addressing and service discovery
 Scalability
 Deployment considerations

1.3.1 Medium Access Control

 The purpose of this protocol is to achieve a distributed FIFO
schedule among multiple
nodes in an ad hoc network. When a node transmits a packet, it
adds the information

about the arrival time of queued packets. It provide fair access to

shared broadcast
radio channel. The major issues in MAC protocol are as follows:
 Distributed Operation: The MAC protocol design should be fully
distributed
involving minimum control overhead, because it need to operate in
environment without centralized device.
 Synchronization: The synchronization is mandatory for TDMA-
based systems
for management of transmission and reception slots.
 Hidden Terminals Problem: Hidden terminals are nodes that are
hidden (or
not reachable) from the sender of a data transmission session, but
are reachable
to the receiver of the session.

 Collisions at receiver node -> inefficient bandwidth utilization,

reduce throughput.

 Exposed Terminals Problem: The nodes that are in the

transmission range of
the sender of an on-going session, are prevented from making a
transmission.
The exposed nodes should be allowed to transmit in a controlled
fashion
without causing collision to the on-going data transfer.

 Throughput: The MAC protocol employed in ad hoc wireless

networks should
attempt to maximize the throughput of the system. The important
considerations for throughput enhancement are
 Minimizing the occurrence of collisions.
 Maximizing channel utilization
 Minimizing control overhead.

 Access delay: The average delay that any packet experiences to

get
transmitted. The MAC protocol should attempt to minimize the
delay.
 Fairness: Fairness refers to the ability of the MAC protocol to
provide an equal
share or weighted share of the bandwidth to all competing nodes.
Fairness can
be either node-based or flow-based.
 Real-time Traffic support: In a contention-based channel access
environment,

without any central coordination, with limited bandwidth, and with

location-
dependent contention, supporting time- sensitive traffic such as
voice, video,

and real-time data requires explicit support from the MAC protocol.
 Resource reservation: The provisioning of QoS defined by
parameters such as
bandwidth, delay, and jitter requires reservation of resources such
as
bandwidth, buffer space, and processing power.
 Ability to measure resource availability: In order to handle the
resources
such as bandwidth efficiently and perform call admission control
based on their
availability, the MAC protocol should be able to provide an
estimation of
resource availability at every node. This can also be used for
making
congestion control decisions.
 Capability for power control: The transmission power control
reduces the
energy consumption at the nodes, causes a decrease in interference
at
neighboring nodes, and increases frequency reuse.
 Adaptive rate control: This refers to the variation in the data bit
rate achieved
over a channel. A MAC protocol that has adaptive rate control can
make use of
a high data rate when the sender and receiver are nearby &
adaptively reduce
the data rate as they move away from each other.

1.3.2 Routing

 The responsibilities of a routing protocol include exchanging the

route information;
finding a feasible path to a destination. The major challenges that a
routing protocol
faces are as follows:
 Mobility: The Mobility of nodes results in frequent path breaks,
packet
collisions, transient loops, stale routing information, and difficulty
in resource
reservation.
 Bandwidth constraint: Since the channel is shared by all nodes in
the
broadcast region, the bandwidth available per wireless link depends
on the
number of nodes & traffic they handle.
 Error-prone and shared channel: The Bit Error Rate (BER) in a
wireless
channel is very high [10-5 to 10 -3] compared to that in its wired
counterparts
[10-12 to 10-9].
 Location-dependent contention: The load on the wireless channel
varies with
the number of nodes present in a given geographical region. This
makes the
contention for the channel high when the number of nodes
increases. The high
contention for the channel results in a high number of collisions &
a subsequent
wastage of bandwidth.
 Other resource constraints: The constraints on resources such as
computing
power, battery power, and buffer storage also limit the capability of
a routing
protocol.

The major requirements of a routing protocol in ad hoc wireless

networks are the following.

 Minimum route acquisition delay

 Quick route reconfiguration
 Loop-free routing
 Distributed routing approach
 Minimum control overhead
 Scalability
 Provisioning of QoS
 Support for time-sensitive traffic
 Security and privacy

1.3.3 Multicasting
 It plays important role in emergency search & rescue operations
& in military
communication. Use of single link connectivity among the nodes in
a multicast group

results in a tree-shaped multicast routing topology. Such a tree-

shaped topology
provides high multicast efficiency, with low packet delivery ratio
due to the frequency
tree breaks. The major issues in designing multicast routing
protocols are as follows:
 Robustness: The multicast routing protocol must be able to
recover &
reconfigure quickly from potential mobility-induced link breaks
thus
making it suitable for use in high dynamic environments.
 Efficiency: A multicast protocol should make a minimum
number of
transmissions to deliver a data packet to all the group members.
 Control overhead: The scarce bandwidth availability in ad hoc
wireless networks demands minimal control overhead for the
multicast
session.
 Quality of Service: QoS support is essential in multicast routing
because, in most cases, the data transferred in a multicast session is
time-sensitive.
 Efficient group management: Group management refers to the
process of accepting multicast session members and maintaining
the
connectivity among them until the session expires.
 Scalability: The multicast routing protocol should be able to
scale for
a network with a large number of node
 Security: Authentication of session members and prevention of
non-
members from gaining unauthorized information play a major role
in
military communications.

1.3.4 Transport Layer Protocol

 The main objectives of the transport layer protocols include :
 Setting up & maintaining end-to-end connections,
 Reliable end-to-end delivery of packets,
 Flow control &
 Congestion control.
Examples of some transport layers protocols are,
a) UDP ( User Datagram Protocol ) :
 It is an unreliable connectionless transport layer protocol.
 It neither performs flow control & congestion control.

 It do not take into account the current network status such as

congestion at the
intermediate links, the rate of collision, or other similar factors
affecting the
network throughput.
b) TCP (Transmission Control Protocol):
 It is a reliable connection-oriented transport layer protocol.
 It performs flow control & congestion control.
 Here performance degradation arises due to frequent path breaks,
presence of
stale routing information, high channel error rate, and frequent
network
partitions.
1.3.5 Quality of Service (QoS)
 QoS is the performance level of services offered by a service
provider or a network to
the user.
 QoS provisioning often requires,
 Negotiation between host & the network.
 Resource reservation schemes.
 Priority scheduling &
 Call admission control.
 QoS parameters

 QoS-aware routing
 Finding the path is the first step toward a QoS-aware routing
protocol.
 The parameters that can be considered for routing decisions are,
 Network throughput.
 Packet delivery ratio.
 Reliability.
 Delay.

 Delay jitter.
 Packet loss rate.
 Bit error rate.
1.3.6 Self-Organization
 One very important property that an ad hoc wireless network
should exhibit is
organizing & maintaining the network by itself.

 The major activities that an ad hoc wireless network is required

to perform for self-
organization are,

 Neighbour discovery.
 Topology organization &
 Topology reorganization (updating topology information)

1.3.7 Security
 Security is an important issue in ad hoc wireless network as the
information can be
hacked.
 Attacks against network are two types
 Passive attack → Made by malicious node to obtain information
transacted in
the network without disrupting the operation.
 Active attack → They disrupt the operation of network.
 Further active attacks are two types
 External attack: The active attacks that are executed by nodes
outside the
network.
 Internal attack: The active attacks that are performed by nodes
belonging to
the same network.

 The major security threats that exist in ad hoc wireless networks

are as follows :
 Denial of service – The attack affected by making the network
resource
unavailable for service to other nodes, either by consuming the
bandwidth or
by overloading the system.
 Resource consumption – The scarce availability of resources in
ad hoc
wireless network makes it an easy target for internal attacks,
particularly
aiming at consuming resources available in the network. The major
types of
resource consumption attacks are,
 Energy depletion
 Highly constrained by the energy source

 Aimed at depleting the battery power of critical nodes.

 Buffer overflow
 Carried out either by filling the routing table with unwanted
routing entries or by consuming the data packet buffer space
with unwanted data.
 Lead to a large number of data packets being dropped, leading
to the loss of critical information.

 Host impersonation – A compromised internal node can act as

another node and
respond with appropriate control packets to create wrong route
entries, and can
terminate the traffic meant for the intended destination node.
 Information disclosure – A compromised node can act as an
informer by
deliberate disclosure of confidential information to unauthorized
nodes.
 Interference – A common attack in defense applications to jam
the wireless
communication by creating a wide spectrum noise.

1.3.8 Addressing and Service Discovery

 Addressing & service discovery assume significance in ad hoc
wireless network due
to the absence of any centralised coordinator.
 An address that is globally unique in the connected part of the ad
hoc wireless
network is required for a node in order to participate in
communication.
 Auto-configuration of addresses is required to allocate non-
duplicate addresses to the
nodes.
1.3.9 Energy Management
 Energy management is defined as the process of managing the
sources & consumers
of energy in a node or in the network for enhancing the lifetime of a
network.
 Features of energy management are:
 Shaping the energy discharge pattern of a node’s battery to
enhance battery
life.
 Finding routes that consumes minimum energy.
 Using distributed scheduling schemes to improve battery life.
 Handling the processor & interface devices to minimize power
consumption.
 Energy management can be classified into the following
categories:
 Transmission power management

 The power consumed by the Radio Frequency (RF) module of a

mobile node is determined by several factors such as
 The state of operation.
 The transmission power and
 The technology used for the RF circuitry.

 Battery energy management

 The battery management is aimed at extending the battery life of
a
node by taking advantage of its chemical properties, discharge
patterns, and by the selection of a battery from a set of batteries that
is
available for redundancy.
 Processor power management
 The clock speed and the number of instructions executed per unit
time
are some of the processor parameters that affect power
consumption.
 The CPU can be put into different power saving modes during
low
processing load conditions.
 The CPU power can be completely turned off if the machines is
idle
for a long time.
 Devices power management
 Intelligent device management can reduce power consumption of
a
mobile node significantly.
 This can be done by the operating system (OS) by selectively
powering
down interface devices that are not used or by putting devices into
different power saving modes, depending on their usage.

1.3.10 Scalability
 Scalability is the ability of the routing protocol to scale well in a
network with a large
number of nodes.
 It requires minimization of control overhead & adaptation of the
routing protocol to
the network size.
1.3.11 Deployment Considerations
 The deployment of a commercial ad hoc wireless network has
the following benefits
when compared to wired networks
 Low cost of deployment

 The use of multi-hop wireless relaying eliminates the

requirement of
cables & maintenance in deployment of communication
infrastructure.
 The cost involved is much lower than that of wired networks.
 Incremental deployment
 Deployment can be performed incrementally over geographical
regions
of the city.
 The deployed part of the network starts functioning immediately
after
the minimum configuration is done.

 Short deployment time

 Compared to wired networks, the deployment time is
considerably less
due to the absence of any wired links.

 Reconfigurability
 The cost involved in reconfiguring a wired network covering a
Metropolitan Area Network (MAN) is very high compared to that
of an
ad hoc wireless network covering the same service area.

2. How Wireless Ad Hoc Networks face the Challenges and how it

overcomes the needs.
 Major issues and challenges that affect the design and performance of a
wireless sensor
network are as follows
 Energy Efficiency
 Quality of Service
 Security Issue
 Deployment
 Node Costs
 Limited Bandwidth
 Scalability to large scale of deployment
 Fault-Tolerance
 Multi-hop communication
 Design Constraints
Energy Efficiency
 The first and often most important design challenge for a WSN is energy
efficiency.
Power consumption can be allocated to three functional domains: sensing,
communication, and data processing, each of which requires optimization.

 The sensor node lifetime typically exhibits a strong dependency on battery

life. The
constraint most often associated with sensor network design is that sensor
nodes
operate with limited energy budgets.
 Typically, sensors are powered through batteries, which must be either
replaced or
recharged when depleted. For non-rechargeable batteries, a sensor node should
be
able to operate until either its mission time has passed or the battery can be
replaced. The length of the mission time depends on the type of application.

Quality of Service (QOS)

 Some real time sensor application are very time critical which means the
data should
be delivered within a certain period of time from the moment it is sensed,
otherwise
the data will be unusable .So this must be a QOS parameter for some
applications
Security Issue
 Many wireless sensor networks collect sensitive information, especially for
military
applications which carry sensitive data. The remote and unattended operation
of
sensor nodes increases their exposure to malicious intrusions and attacks.
 Further, wireless communications make it easy for an adversary to
eavesdrop on
sensor transmissions. For example, one of the most challenging security threats
is a
denial-of service (DoS) attack, whose goal is to disrupt the correct operation of
a
sensor network.
Deployment
 Node deployment is a fundamental issue to be solved in Wireless Sensor
Networks. A
proper node deployment scheme can reduce the complexity of problems.
 Deploying and managing a high number of nodes in a relatively bounded
environment
requires special techniques. Hundreds to thousands of sensors may be deployed
in a
sensor region.
 There are two deployment models at present: (i) static deployment (ii)
dynamic
deployment. The static deployment chooses the best location according to the
optimization strategy, and the location of the sensor nodes has no change in the
lifetime of the WSN. The dynamic deployment throws the nodes randomly for
optimization
Node Costs
 A sensor network consists of a large set of sensor nodes. It follows that the
cost of an
individual node is critical to the overall financial metric of the sensor network.

 Clearly, the cost of each sensor node has to be kept low for the global
metrics to be
acceptable. Depending on the application of sensor network, large number
sensors
might be scattered randomly over an environment, such as weather monitoring.
 If the overall cost was appropriate for sensor networks and it will be more
acceptable
and successful to users which need careful consideration.
Limited Bandwidth
 Bandwidth limitation directly affects message exchanges among sensors,
and
synchronization is impossible without message exchanges.
 Sensor networks often operate in a bandwidth and performance constrained
multi-hop
wireless communications medium. Presently, wireless communication is
limited to a
data rate in the order of 10–100 Kbits/second.
Scalability to large scale of deployment
 In some applications, tens of thousands of sensors might be deployed. At
any time
numbers of nods can be increased or decreased. A synchronization scheme
should
scale well with increasing number of nodes and/or high density in the network.
Fault-Tolerance
 In a hostile environment, a sensor node may fail due to physical damage or
lack of
energy (power). If some nodes fail, the protocols that are working upon must
accommodate these changes in the network. As an example, for routing or
aggregation protocol, they must find suitable paths or aggregation point in case
of
these kinds of failures.
Multi-hop communication
 The need for multi-hop communication arises due to the increase in the size
of
wireless sensor networks. In such settings, sensors in one domain communicate
with
sensors in another domain via an intermediate sensor that can relate to both
domains.
Communication can also occur as a sequence of hops through a chain of pair-
wise
adjacent sensors.
Design Constraints
 The primary goal of wireless sensor design is to create smaller, cheaper, and
more
efficient devices.
 A variety of additional challenges can affect the design of sensor nodes and
wireless
sensor networks. WSN have challenges on both software and hardware design
models
with restricted constraints.

2.3 Enabling Technologies for Wireless Sensor Networks

 The building of wireless sensor networks has only become possible with
some
fundamental advances in enabling technologies.
2.3.1 Hardware Design
 First and foremost among these technologies is the miniaturization of
hardware.
Smaller feature sizes in chips have driven down the power consumption of the
basic
components of a sensor node to a level that the constructions of WSNs can be
contemplated.
 This is particularly relevant to microcontrollers and memory chips as such,
but also,
the radio modems, responsible for wireless communication, have become
much more
energy efficient.
 Reduced chip size and improved energy efficiency is accompanied by
reduced cost,
which is necessary to make redundant deployment of nodes affordable.
2.3.2 Energy Consumption
 The sensor nodes consume the power for important three functional domains
such
as sensing, communication, and data processing. The sensor node lifetime
typically
exhibits a strong dependency on battery life. The constraint most often
associated
with sensor network design is that sensor nodes operate with limited energy
budgets.
 Typically, sensors are powered through batteries, which must be either
replaced or
recharged when depleted. For non-rechargeable batteries, a sensor node should
be
able to operate until either its mission time has passed or the battery can be
replaced. The length of the mission time depends on the type of application.
 A sensor node also has a device for energy scavenging. Energy Scavenging
(also
known as power harvesting or energy harvesting or ambient power) is the
process
by which energy is derived from external sources (e.g., solar power, thermal
energy, wind energy, salinity gradients, and kinetic energy, also known as
ambient
energy), captured, and stored for small, wireless autonomous devices, like
those
used in wearable electronics and wireless sensor networks. Such a concept
requires
the battery to be efficiently chargeable with small amounts of current, which is
not a
standard ability.
Classical energy consumption model

 An energy consumption model for sensors based on the observation that the
energy
consumption would likely be dominated by the data communications
subsystem.
Table 2.1 reproduces their model. The energy level is mentioned by Joules.
Table 2.1 Radio Characteristics, Classical model

Modelling energy consumption during transmission

 The energy consumed by a transmitter is due to two sources. One part is due
to RF
signal generation, which mostly depends on chosen modulation and target
distance
and hence on the transmission power Ptx, that is, the power radiated by the
antenna.
 A second part is due to electronic components necessary for frequency
synthesis,
frequency conversion, filters, and so on. These costs are basically constant.
One of
the most crucial decisions when transmitting a packet is thus the choice of Ptx.
 Let us assume that the desired transmission power Ptx is known. The
transmitted
power is generated by the amplifier of a transmitter. Its own power
consumption
Pamp depends on its architecture, but for most of them, their consumed power
depends on the power they are to generate. In the most simplistic models, these
two
values are proportional to each other, but this is an oversimplification.
 A more realistic model assumes that a certain constant power level is always
required irrespective of radiated power, plus a proportional offset:

Pamp = αamp + βampPtx

where αamp and βamp are constants depending on process technology and
amplifier
architecture.
2.3.3 Software
 Energy is the scarcest resource of WSN nodes, and it determines the lifetime
of
WSNs. WSNs may be deployed in large numbers in various environments,
including
remote and hostile regions, where ad hoc communications are a key
component.

 For this reason, algorithms and protocols need to address the following
issues:
 Increased lifespan
 Robustness and fault tolerance
 Self-configuration
 Lifetime maximization: Energy/Power Consumption of the sensing device
should be
minimized and sensor nodes should be energy efficient since their limited
energy
resource determines their lifetime. To conserve power, wireless sensor nodes
normally power off both the radio transmitter and the radio receiver when not
in use
2.3.4 Routing protocols
 Wireless sensor networks are composed of low-energy, small-size, and low-
range
unattended sensor nodes. Recently, it has been observed that by periodically
turning
on and off the sensing and communication capabilities of sensor nodes, we can
significantly reduce the active time and thus prolong network lifetime.
 However, this duty cycling may result in high network latency, routing
overhead, and
neighbour discovery delays due to asynchronous sleep and wake-up
scheduling.
These limitations call for a countermeasure for duty-cycled wireless sensor
networks
which should minimize routing information, routing traffic load, and energy
consumption.
2.3.5 Operating systems
 Operating systems for wireless sensor network nodes are typically less
complex than
general-purpose operating systems.
 They more strongly resemble embedded systems, for two reasons. First,
wireless
sensor networks are typically deployed with a particular application in mind,
rather
than as a general platform. Second, a need for low costs and low power leads
most
wireless sensor nodes to have low-power microcontrollers ensuring that
mechanisms
such as virtual memory are either unnecessary or too expensive to implement.
2.4 WSN Application Examples
 Wireless sensor network (WSN) refers to a group of spatially dispersed and
dedicated
sensors for monitoring and recording the physical conditions of the
environment and
organizing the collected data at a central location.

 There are numerous applications of WSNs. Some of applications are:

 Military or Border Surveillance Applications
 Environmental Applications
 Air Pollution Monitoring
 Forest Fire Detection
 Landslide Detection
 Water Quality Monitoring
 Natural Disaster Prevention
 Health Care Applications
 Home Intelligence
 Industrial Process Control
 Agriculture
 Structural Monitoring

2.4.1 Military or Border Surveillance Applications

 WSNs are becoming an integral part of military command, control,
communication
and intelligence systems.
 Sensors can be deployed in a battle field to monitor the presence of forces
and
vehicles, and track their movements, enabling close surveillance of opposing
forces.
 The chemical, nuclear and biological attacks can also be detected through
the sensor
nodes.
 An example of this is the ‘sniper detection system’ which can detect the
incoming fire
through acoustic sensors and the position of the shooter can also be estimated
by
processing the detected audio from the microphone.
2.4.2 Environmental Applications
 These sensor networks have a huge number of applications in the
environment. They
can be used to track movement of animals, birds and record them.
 Monitoring of earth, soil, atmosphere context, irrigation and precision
agriculture can
be done through these sensors.
 A common example is of ‘Zebra Net’. The purpose of this system is to track
and
monitor the movements and interactions of zebras within themselves and with
other
species also.

 There are many applications in monitoring environmental parameters. Some

examples
of which are given below:
 Air Pollution Monitoring
 Wireless sensor networks have been deployed in several cities to monitor
the concentration of dangerous gases for citizens. These can take
advantage of the ad hoc wireless links rather than wired installations,
which also make them more mobile for testing readings in different areas.

 Forest Fire Detection

 A network of Sensor Nodes can be installed in a forest to detect when
a fire has started. The nodes can be equipped with sensors to measure
temperature, humidity and gases which are produced by fire in the trees or
vegetation. The early detection is crucial for a successful action of the fire
fighters.
 Landslide Detection
 A landslide detection system makes use of a wireless sensor network to
detect the slight movements of soil and changes in various parameters that
may occur before or during a landslide. Through the data gathered it may
be possible to know the impending occurrence of landslides long before it
actually happens.
 Water Quality Monitoring
 Water quality monitoring involves analyzing water properties in dams,
rivers, lakes and oceans, as well as underground water reserves. The use of
many wireless distributed sensors enables the creation of a more accurate
map of the water status, and allows the permanent deployment of
monitoring stations in locations of difficult access, without the need of
manual data retrieval.
 Natural Disaster Prevention
 Wireless sensor networks can be effective in preventing adverse
consequences of natural disasters, like floods. Wireless nodes have been
deployed successfully in rivers, where changes in water levels must be
monitored in real time.
2.4.3 Health Care Applications

 Wireless sensor networks can be used to monitor and track elders and
patients for
health care purposes, which can significantly relieve the severe shortage of
health care
personnel and reduce the health care expenditures in the current health care
systems.
 For example sensors can be deployed in a patient’s home to monitor the
behaviors of
the patient. It can alert doctors when the patient falls and requires immediate
medical
attention.
 An example of this is ‘artificial retina’ which helps the patient in detecting
the
presence of light and the movement of objects.
2.4.4 Home Intelligence
 Wireless sensor networks can be used to provide more convenient and
intelligent
living environments for human beings.
 For example, wireless sensors can be used to remotely read utility meters in
a home
like water, gas, electricity and then send the readings to a remote centre
through
wireless communication
2.4.5 Industrial Process Control
 In industry, WSNs can be used to monitor manufacturing process or the
condition of
manufacturing equipment.
 For example, chemical plants or oil refiners can use sensors to monitor the
condition
of their miles of pipelines. These sensors are used to alert in case of any
failures
occurred.
2.4.6 Agriculture
 Sensors used in smart farming are known as agriculture sensors.
 These sensors provide data which assist farmers to monitor and optimize
crops by
adapting to changes in the environmental conditions. These sensors are
installed on
weather stations, drones and robots used in the agriculture industry.
2.4.7 Structural Monitoring
 Wireless sensors can be used to monitor the movement within buildings and
infrastructure such as bridges, flyovers, embankments, tunnels etc... enabling
Engineering practices to monitor assets remotely without the need for costly
site
visits, as well as having the advantage of daily data, whereas traditionally this
data
was collected weekly or monthly, using physical site visits, involving either
road or
rail closure in some cases.

3. How the low duty cycle helps to make phase changes in

wireless sensor networks.
The basic idea of low duty cycle protocols is to reduce the time a node is idle or
spends overhearing an unnecessary activity by putting the node in the sleep state.
 The most ideal condition of low duty cycle protocols is when a node is a sleep most of
the time and wakes up only when to transmit or receive packets.
 The concept of a low duty cycle is represented as a periodic wake-up scheme. A node
wakes up periodically to transmit or receive packets from other nodes. Usually after a
node wakes up, it listens to the channel for any activity before transmitting or
receiving packets.
 If no packet is to be transmitted or received, the node returns to the sleep state. A
whole cycle consisting of a sleep period and a listening period is called a sleep /
wake-up period and is depicted in Figure 3.1

Figure 1 A Periodic Wake-up Scheme

 Duty cycle is measured as the ratio of the listening period length to the wake-up
period length which gives an indicator of how long a node spends in the listening
period.
 For example, the node A transmit a short beacon at the beginning of its listen period to
indicate its willingness to receive packets. Another method is to let node B send
frequent request packets until one of them hits A’s listen period and is really answered
by A. However, in either case, node A only receives packets during its listen period. If
node A itself wants to transmit packets, it must acquire the target’s listen period. A
whole cycle consisting of sleep period and listen period is also called a wakeup
period.
Important Observations

 By choosing a small duty cycle, the transceiver is in sleep mode most of the
time, avoiding idle listening and conserving energy.
 By choosing a small duty cycle, the traffic directed from neighbouring nodes
to a given node concentrates on a small time window (the listen period) and in
heavy load situations significant competition can occur.
 Choosing a long sleep period induces a significant per-hop latency, since a
prospective transmitter node has to wait an average of half a sleep period
before the receiver can accept packets. In the multi-hop case, the per-hop
latencies add up and create significant end-to-end latencies.
 Sleep phases should not be too short lest the start-up costs outweigh the
benefits.

3.4 S-MAC
 The S-MAC (Sensor-MAC) protocol provides mechanisms to avoid idle listening,
collisions, and overhearing.
 S-MAC adopts a periodic wakeup scheme, with virtual cluster features as shown in
Figure 3.2. Basically a network is formed as a flat single-hop topology and S-MAC
utilises only one frequency channel for communication.
 The listen period of S-MAC can be used to receive and transmit packets. The listen
period is fixed at 115 ms and the wake-up period can take up to hundreds of
milliseconds. Thus the sleep period is adjustable. Within a cluster, all the nodes are
synchronised such that all the nodes can wake up at the same time.
Figure 2 S-MAC Scheme

 A node x’s listen period is subdivided into three different phases. There are

 SYNCH Phase
 RTS Phase
 CTS Phase

SYNCH Phase
 Node x accepts SYNCH packets from its neighbors. In these packets, the neighbors
describe their own schedule and x stores their schedule in a table (schedule table).
 Node x’s SYNCH phase is subdivided into time slots and x’s neighbors contend
according to a CSMA scheme with additional backoff, that is, each neighbour y
wishing to transmit a SYNCH packet picks one of the time slots randomly and starts
to transmit if no signal was received in any of the previous slots.
 In the other case, y goes back into sleep mode and waits for x’s next wakeup. In the
other direction, since x knows a neighbour y’s schedule, x can wake at appropriate
times and send its own SYNCH packet to y (in broadcast mode).
 It is not required that x broadcasts its schedule in every of y’s wakeup periods.
However, for reasons of time synchronization and to allow new nodes to learn their
local network topology, x should send SYNCH packets periodically. The according
period is called synchronization period.
RTS Phase
 Node x listens for RTS packets from neighbouring nodes. In S-MAC, the RTS/CTS
handshake is used to reduce collisions of data packets due to hidden-terminal
situations.
CTS Phase

 Node x transmits a CTS packet if an RTS packet was received in the previous phase.
After this, the packet exchange continues, extending into x’s nominal sleep time.
3.4.1 Network Allocation Vector (NAV) Approach
 In general, when competing for the medium, the nodes use the RTS/CTS handshake,
including the virtual carrier-sense mechanism, whereby a node maintains a NAV
(Network Allocation Vector) variable. The NAV mechanism can be readily used to
switch off the node during ongoing transmissions to avoid overhearing.
3.4.2 Virtual Cluster
 The S-MAC protocol allows neighbouring nodes to agree on the same schedule and to
create virtual clusters. The clustering structure refers solely to the exchange of
schedules; the transfer of data packets is not influenced by virtual clustering.
 The S-MAC protocol proceeds as follows to form the virtual clusters: A node x,
newly switched on, listens for a time of at least the (globally known) synchronization
period.
 If x receives any SYNCH packet from a neighbour, it adopts the announced schedule
and broadcasts it in one of the neighbours’ next listen periods. In the other case, node
x picks a schedule and broadcasts it.
 If x receives another node’s schedule during the broadcast packet’s contention period,
it drops its own schedule and follows the other one. It might also happen that a node x
receives a different schedule after it already has chosen one, for example, because bit
errors destroyed previous SYNCH packets.
 If node x already knows about the existence of neighbors who adopted its own
schedule, it keeps its schedule and in the future has to transmit its SYNCH and data
packets according to both schedules.
 On the other hand, if x has no neighbour sharing its schedule, it drops its own and
adopts the other one. Since there is always a chance to receive SYNCH packets in
error, node x periodically listens for a whole synchronization period to relearn its
neighbourhood. This makes the virtual cluster formation fairly robust.
3.4.3 Message Passing Approach
 S-MAC also adopts a message-passing approach (illustrated in Figure 3.3), where a
message is a larger data item meaningful to the application. In-network processing
usually requires the aggregating node to receive a message completely.

 On the other hand, on wireless media, it is advisable to break a longer packet into
several shorter ones.
 S-MAC includes a fragmentation scheme working as follows. A series of fragments is
transmitted with only one RTS/CTS exchange between the transmitting node A and
receiving node B. After each fragment, B has to answer with an acknowledgment
packet. All the packets (data, ack, RTS, CTS) have a duration field and a
neighbouring node C is required to set its NAV field accordingly.

Figure 3. S-MAC fragmentation and NAV setting

 In S-MAC, the duration field of all packets carries the remaining length of the whole
transaction, including all fragments and their acknowledgments. Therefore, the whole
message shall be passed at once.
 If one fragment needs to be retransmitted, the remaining duration is incremented by
the length of a data plus ack packet, and the medium is reserved for this prolonged
time. However, there is the problem of how a nonparticipating node shall learn about
the elongation of the transaction when he has only heard the initial RTS or CTS
packets.