PROTOCOLS AND ARCHITECTURES
FOR WIRELESS SENSOR NETWORKS
UNIT – 5
TRANSPORT LAYER AND SECURITY IN WSN
TRANSPORT LAYER PROTOCOLS IN
WSN
• The objectives of a transport layer protocol
include
– setting up of an end-to-end connection,
– end-to-end delivery of data packets.
– flow control,
– and congestion control.
• There exist simple, unreliable, and connection-
less transport layer protocols such as UDP, and
reliable, byte-stream-based, and connection-
oriented transport layer protocols such as TCP for
wired networks. These traditional wired transport
layer protocols are not suitable for ad hoc
wireless networks due to the inherent problems
associated with the latter. 2
TRANSPORT LAYER ISSUES IN WSN
• Induced traffic: Unlike wired networks, ad hoc
wireless networks utilize multi-hop radio relaying. In a
path having multiple links, transmission at a particular
link affects one upstream link and one downstream
link. This traffic at any given link (or path) due to the
traffic through neighboring links (or paths) is referred
to as induced traffic. This induced traffic affects the
throughput achieved by the transport layer protocol.
• Induced throughput unfairness: This refers to the
throughput unfairness at the transport layer due to
the throughput/delay unfairness existing at the lower
layers such as the network and MAC layers.
• Separation of congestion control, reliability and
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TRANSPORT LAYER ISSUES IN WSN
• Power and bandwidth constraints: Nodes in ad
hoc wireless networks face resource constraints
including the two most important resources: (i) power
source and (ii) bandwidth. The performance of a
transport layer protocol is significantly affected by
these constraints.
• Misinterpretation of congestion: Traditional
mechanisms of detecting congestion in networks,
such as packet loss and retransmission timeout, are
not suitable for detecting the network congestion in
ad hoc wireless networks. This is because the high
error rates of wireless channel, location-dependent
contention, hidden terminal problem, packet collisions
in the network, path breaks due to the mobility of
nodes, and node failure due to a drained battery can
also lead to packet loss in ad hoc wireless networks. 4
TRANSPORT LAYER ISSUES IN WSN
• Dynamic topology: Some of the deployment
scenarios of ad hoc wireless networks
experience rapidly changing network topology
due to the mobility of nodes. This can lead to
frequent path breaks, partitioning and
remerging of networks, and high delay in
reestablishment of paths. Hence, the
performance of a transport layer protocol is
significantly affected by the rapid changes in
the network topology.
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TRANSPORT LAYER DESIGN ISSUES
• The protocol should maximize the throughput
per connection.
• It should provide throughput fairness across
contending flows.
• The protocol should incur minimum
connection setup and connection maintenance
overheads. It should minimize the resource
requirements for setting up and maintaining
the connection in order to make the protocol
scalable in large networks.
• The transport layer protocol should have
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mechanisms for congestion control and flow
TRANSPORT LAYER DESIGN ISSUES
• The protocol should be able to adapt to the
dynamics of the network such as the rapid
change in topology and changes in the nature
of wireless links from uni-directional to
bidirectional or vice versa.
• The protocol should be aware of resource
constraints such as battery power and buffer
sizes and make efficient use of them.
• The transport layer protocol should make use
of information from the lower layers in the
protocol stack for improving the network
throughput. 7
CLASSIFICATION OF TRANSPORT
LAYER SOLUTIONS
Explain Dynamic
Source Routing
FEEDBACK TCP [TCP-F]
• Feedback-based TCP [also referred to as TCP
feedback (TCP-F)] proposes modifications to
the traditional TCP for improving performance
in ad hoc wireless networks.
• It uses a feedback-based approach. TCP-F
requires the support of a reliable link layer and
a routing protocol that can provide feedback to
the TCP sender about the path breaks.
• The routing protocol is expected to repair the
broken path within a reasonable time period.
FEEDBACK TCP [TCP-F]
• RFN – Route Failure Notification
• RRN – Route Reestablishment
Notification 10
ADVANTAGES OF FEEDBACK TCP [TCP-
F]
• TCP-F provides a simple feedback-based
solution to minimize the problems arising out
of frequent path breaks in ad hoc wireless
networks. It also permits the TCP congestion
control mechanism to respond to congestion in
the network.
• TCP-F depends on the intermediate nodes’
ability to detect route failures and the routing
protocols’ capability to reestablish a broken
path within a reasonably short duration.
• If a route to the sender is not available at the
FP, then additional control packets may need
to be generated for routing the RFN packet.
TCP with Buffering Capability and
Sequence Information [TCP-BuS]
• TCP with buffering capability and sequence
information (TCP-BuS) is similar to the TCP-F in
its use of feedback information from an
intermediate node on detection of a path
break.
• But TCP-BuS is more dependent on the routing
protocol compared to TCP-F and TCP-BuS was
proposed with associativity-based routing
(ABR).
• Upon detection of a path break, an upstream
intermediate node [called pivot node (PN)]
TCP with Buffering Capability and
Sequence Information [TCP-BuS]
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TCP-BuS Advantages and Disadvantages
• The advantages of TCP-BuS
– performance improvement and avoidance of fast
retransmission due to the use of buffering, sequence
numbering, and selective acknowledgment.
– TCP-BuS also takes advantage of the underlying
routing protocols, especially the on-demand routing
protocols such as ABR.
• The disadvantages of TCP-BuS
– the increased dependency on the routing protocol and
the buffering at the intermediate nodes. The failure of
intermediate nodes that buffer the packets may lead
to loss of packets and performance degradation. The
dependency of TCP-BuS on the routing protocol may
degrade its performance with other routing protocols
that do not have similar control messages as in ABR.14
Ad hoc TCP [ATCP]
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Ad hoc TCP [ATCP]
• Similar to TCP-F and TCP-ELFN, ad hoc TCP
(ATCP) also uses a network layer feedback
mechanism to make the TCP sender aware of
the status of the network path over which the
TCP packets are propagated.
• Based on the feedback information received
from the intermediate nodes, the TCP sender
changes its state to the persist state,
congestion control state, or the retransmit
state.
• When an intermediate node finds that the
network is partitioned, then the TCP sender
state is changed to the persist state where16 it
Ad hoc TCP [ATCP]
• If an intermediate node loses a packet due to error,
then the ATCP at the TCP sender immediately
retransmits it without invoking the congestion control
algorithm. In order to be compatible with widely
deployed TCPbased networks, ATCP provides this
feature without modifying the traditional TCP.
• ATCP is implemented as a thin layer residing between
the IP and TCP protocols. The ATCP layer essentially
makes use of the explicit congestion notification (ECN)
for maintenance of the states.
• Advantages:
– It maintains the end to end semantics of TCP.
– It is compatible with traditional TCP.
– Improves throughput of TCP in ad hoc wireless network.
• Disadvantages: 17
Ad hoc TCP [ATCP]
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SECURITY IN WIRELESS SENSOR
NETWORKS
• A security protocol for ad hoc wireless
networks should satisfy the following
requirements
• Confidentiality:
– The data sent by the sender must be
comprehensible only to the intended receiver.
– Though an intruder might get hold of the data being
sent, he / she must not be able to derive any useful
information out of the data.
– One of the popular techniques used for ensuring
confidentiality is data encryption.
• Integrity:
– The data sent by the source node should reach the
destination node without being altered. 19
SECURITY IN WIRELESS SENSOR
NETWORKS
• A security protocol for ad hoc wireless
networks should satisfy the following
requirements
• Availability:
– The network should remain operational all the time.
– It must be robust enough to tolerate link failures
and also be capable of surviving various attacks
mounted on it.
– It should be able to provide guaranteed services
whether an authorized user requires them
• Non-Repudiation:
– It is a mechanism to guarantee that the sender of a
message cannot later deny having sent the
message and that the recipient cannot deny having
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ISSUES AND CHALLENGES IN SECURITY
PROVISIONING
• Shared broadcast radio channel:
– The radio channel used for communication in ad hoc
wireless networks is broadcast in nature and is
shared by all nodes within its direct transmission
range.
– Data transmitted by a node is received by all nodes
within its direct transmission range. Malicious node
could easily obtain data being transmitted in the
network.
• Limited resource availability:
– Resources such as bandwidth, battery power, &
computational power are scarce in ad hoc wireless
networks.
– Hence it is difficult to implement complex
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cryptography-based security mechanisms in
ISSUES AND CHALLENGES IN SECURITY
PROVISIONING
• Physical Vulnerability:
– Nodes in these networks are usually compact &
hand-held in nature. They could get damaged easily
& are also vulnerable to theft.
• Lack of central authority:
– In wired networks and infrastructure-based wireless
networks, it would be possible to monitor the traffic
on the network through certain important central
points & implement security mechanisms at such
points. Since ad hoc –wireless networks do not have
central points; these mechanisms cannot be applied
in ad hoc wireless networks.
• Lack of associations:
– Since these networks are dynamic in nature, a node
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REQUIREMENTS FOR SECURE ROUTING
IN WIRELESS NETWORKS
• Ensuring secure communication in ad
hoc wireless networks include
– the mobility of nodes
– a promiscuous mode of operation
– limited processing power
– limited availability of resources such
as battery power, bandwidth &
memory. 23
REQUIREMENTS FOR SECURE ROUTING
IN WIRELESS NETWORKS
• A secure routing protocol should be able to detect the
presence of any malicious node in the network &
should avoid the participation of such nodes in the
routing process.
• Guarantee of Correct route discovery:
– If a route between the source & destination node exist, the
routing protocol should be able to find the route, & should also
ensure the correctness of the selected route
• Confidentiality of Network Topology:
– Once the network topology is known, the attacker may try to
study the traffic pattern in the network. If some of the nodes
are found to be more active compared to others, the attacker
may try to mount attacks.
– This may ultimately affect the ongoing routing process. Hence,
confidentiality of network topology is important.
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OUALITY OF SERVICE [QoS]
• Providing QoS support in wireless
networks is the need of the hour as
certain unique characteristics pose
several difficulties in provisioning
QoS. Some of the characteristics are
– dynamically varying network topology,
– lack of precise state information,
– lack of a central controller,
– error-prone shared radio channel,
– limited resource availability, hidden
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ISSUES AND CHALLENGES IN
PROVISIOING QoS IN WSN
• Imprecise state information: The state
information is inherently imprecise due to
dynamic changes in network topology and
channel characteristics. Hence, routing
decisions may not be accurate, resulting in
some of the real-time packets missing their
deadlines.
• Lack of central coordination: Wireless
networks do not have central controllers to
coordinate the activity of nodes. This further
complicates QoS provisioning in ad hoc
wireless networks.
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ISSUES AND CHALLENGES IN
PROVISIOING QoS IN WSN
• Hidden terminal problem: The hidden
terminal problem is inherent in ad hoc wireless
networks. This problem occurs when packets
originating from two or more sender nodes,
which are not within the direct transmission
range of each other, collide at a common
receiver node. It necessitates the
retransmission of the packets, which may not
be acceptable for flows that have stringent
QoS requirements.
• Limited resource availability: Resources
such as bandwidth, battery life, storage space,
and processing capability are limited in ad hoc
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ISSUES AND CHALLENGES IN
PROVISIOING QoS IN WSN
• Hard state versus soft state resource
reservation: QoS resource reservation is one
of the very important components of any QoS
framework.
– Soft-state reservation: The resources are
allocated amongst nodes for only specific amount of
time.
– Hard-state reservation: The resources are
allocated explicitly to the nodes. (Heavy overload
on the network.)
• Stateful versus stateless approach: In the
stateful approach, each node maintains either
global state information or only local state
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ISSUES AND CHALLENGES IN
PROVISIOING QoS IN WSN
• The QoS provisioning approaches can
be broadly classified into two
categories: hard QoS and soft QoS
approaches.
– If QoS requirements of a connection are
guaranteed to be met for the whole
duration of the session, the QoS approach
is termed a hard QoS approach.
– If the QoS requirements are not guaranteed
for the entire session, the QoS approach 29is
CLASSIFICATION OF QoS APPROACHES
IN WSN
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THANK
YOU
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