Carlo Fischione

A generalized Markov chain model for effective analysis of slotted IEEE 802.15.4

A generalized analysis of the IEEE 802.15.4 medium access control (MAC) protocol in terms of reliability, delay and energy consumption is presented. The IEEE 802.15.4 exponential backoff process is modeled through a Markov chain taking into account retry limits, acknowledgements, and unsaturated traffic. Simple and effective approximations of the reliability, delay and energy consumption under low traffic regime are proposed. It is demonstrated that the delay distribution of IEEE 802.15.4 depends mainly on MAC parameters and collision probability. In addition, the impact of MAC parameters on the performance metrics is analyzed. The analysis is more general and gives more accurate results than existing methods in the literature. Monte Carlo simulations confirm that the proposed approximations offer a satisfactory accuracy.

Millimeter Wave Cellular Networks: A MAC Layer Perspective

The millimeter-wave (mmWave) frequency band is seen as a key enabler of multigigabit wireless access in future cellular networks. In order to overcome the propagation challenges, mmWave systems use a large number of antenna elements both at the base station and at the user equipment, which leads to high directivity gains, fully directional communications, and possible noise-limited operations. The fundamental differences between mmWave networks and traditional ones challenge the classical design constraints, objectives, and available degrees of freedom. This paper addresses the implications that highly directional communication has on the design of an efficient medium access control (MAC) layer. The paper discusses key MAC layer issues, such as synchronization, random access, handover, channelization, interference management, scheduling, and association. This paper provides an integrated view on MAC layer issues for cellular networks, identifies new challenges and tradeoffs, and provides novel insights and solution approaches.

Distributed and Collaborative Estimation over Wireless Sensor Networks

A new distributed algorithm for cooperative estimation of a slowly time-varying signal using a wireless sensor network is presented. The estimate in each node is based on a so called consensus algorithm, which weights measurements and estimates of neighboring nodes. The algorithm is therefore scalable with the number of network nodes. It requires only limited information exchange between nodes and computations in each node. The weights are locally optimized based on a minimum variance criterion. Numerical results show that the proposed algorithm exhibits good performance compared to other distributed algorithms proposed in the literature

Modeling and Optimization of the IEEE 802.15.4 Protocol for Reliable and Timely Communications

Distributed processing through ad hoc and sensor networks is having a major impact on scale and applications of computing. The creation of new cyber-physical services based on wireless sensor devices relies heavily on how well communication protocols can be adapted and optimized to meet quality constraints under limited energy resources. The IEEE 802.15.4 medium access control protocol for wireless sensor networks can support energy efficient, reliable, and timely packet transmission by a parallel and distributed tuning of the medium access control parameters. Such a tuning is difficult, because simple and accurate models of the influence of these parameters on the probability of successful packet transmission, packet delay, and energy consumption are not available. Moreover, it is not clear how to adapt the parameters to the changes of the network and traffic regimes by algorithms that can run on resource-constrained devices. In this paper, a Markov chain is proposed to model these relations by simple expressions without giving up the accuracy. In contrast to previous work, the presence of limited number of retransmissions, acknowledgments, unsaturated traffic, packet size, and packet copying delay due to hardware limitations is accounted for. The model is then used to derive a distributed adaptive algorithm for minimizing the power consumption while guaranteeing a given successful packet reception probability and delay constraints in the packet transmission. The algorithm does not require any modification of the IEEE 802.15.4 medium access control and can be easily implemented on network devices. The algorithm has been experimentally implemented and evaluated on a testbed with off-the-shelf wireless sensor devices. Experimental results show that the analysis is accurate, that the proposed algorithm satisfies reliability and delay constraints, and that the approach reduces the energy consumption of the network under both stationary and transient conditions. Specifically, even if the number of devices and traffic configuration change sharply, the proposed parallel and distributed algorithm allows the system to operate close to its optimal state by estimating the busy channel and channel access probabilities. Furthermore, results indicate that the protocol reacts promptly to errors in the estimation of the number of devices and in the traffic load that can appear due to device mobility. It is also shown that the effect of imperfect channel and carrier sensing on system performance heavily depends on the traffic load and limited range of the protocol parameters.

Breath: An Adaptive Protocol for Industrial Control Applications Using Wireless Sensor Networks

An energy-efficient, reliable and timely data transmission is essential for Wireless Sensor Networks (WSNs) employed in scenarios where plant information must be available for control applications. To reach a maximum efficiency, cross-layer interaction is a major design paradigm to exploit the complex interaction among the layers of the protocol stack. This is challenging because latency, reliability, and energy are at odds, and resource-constrained nodes support only simple algorithms. In this paper, the novel protocol Breath is proposed for control applications. Breath is designed for WSNs where nodes attached to plants must transmit information via multihop routing to a sink. Breath ensures a desired packet delivery and delay probabilities while minimizing the energy consumption of the network. The protocol is based on randomized routing, medium access control, and duty-cycling jointly optimized for energy efficiency. The design approach relies on a constrained optimization problem, whereby the objective function is the energy consumption and the constraints are the packet reliability and delay. The challenging part is the modeling of the interactions among the layers by simple expressions of adequate accuracy, which are then used for the optimization by in-network processing. The optimal working point of the protocol is achieved by a simple algorithm, which adapts to traffic variations and channel conditions with negligible overhead. The protocol has been implemented and experimentally evaluated on a testbed with off-the-shelf wireless sensor nodes, and it has been compared with a standard IEEE 802.15.4 solution. Analytical and experimental results show that Breath is tunable and meets reliability and delay requirements. Breath exhibits a good distribution of the working load, thus ensuring a long lifetime of the network. Therefore, Breath is a good candidate for efficient, reliable, and timely data gathering for control applications.

System Level Design for Clustered Wireless Sensor Networks

We present a system level design methodology for clustered wireless sensor networks based on a semi-random communication protocol called SERAN, a mathematical model that allows to optimize the protocol parameters, and a network initialization and maintenance procedure. SERAN is a two-layer (routing and MAC) protocol. At both layers, SERAN combines a randomized and a deterministic approach. While the randomized component provides robustness over unreliable channels, the deterministic component avoids an explosion of packet collisions and allows our protocol to scale with network size. The combined result is a high reliability and major energy savings when dense clusters are used. Our solution is based on a mathematical model that characterizes performance accurately without resorting to extensive simulations. Thanks to this model, the user needs only to specify the application requirements in terms of end-to-end packet delay and packet loss probability, select the intended hardware platform, and the protocol parameters are set automatically to satisfy latency requirements and optimize for energy consumption.

Beam-searching and transmission scheduling in millimeter wave communications

Millimeter wave (mmWave) wireless networks rely on narrow beams to support multi-gigabit data rates. Nevertheless, the alignment of transmitter and receiver beams is a time-consuming operation, which introduces an alignment-throughput tradeoff. A wider beamwidth reduces the alignment overhead, but leads also to reduced directivity gains. Moreover, existing mmWave standards schedule a single transmission in each time slot, although directional communications facilitate multiple concurrent transmissions. In this paper, a joint consideration of the problems of beamwidth selection and scheduling is proposed to maximize effective network throughput. The resulting optimization problem requires exact knowledge of network topology, which may not be available in practice. Therefore, two standard-compliant approximation algorithms are developed, which rely on underestimation and overestimation of interference. The first one aims to maximize the reuse of available spectrum, whereas the second one is a more conservative approach that schedules together only links that cause no interference. Extensive performance analysis provides useful insights on the directionality level and the number of concurrent transmissions that should be pursued. Interestingly, extremely narrow beams are in general not optimal.

Analytical Modeling of Multi-hop IEEE 802.15.4 Networks

Many of existing analytical studies of the IEEE 802.15.4 medium access control (MAC) protocol are not adequate because they are often based on assumptions such as homogeneous traffic and ideal carrier sensing, which are far from reality for multi-hop networks, particularly in the presence of mobility. In this paper, a new generalized analysis of the unslotted IEEE 802.15.4 MAC is presented. The analysis considers the effects induced by heterogeneous traffic due to multi-hop routing and different traffic generation patterns among the nodes of the network and the hidden terminals due to reduced carrier-sensing capabilities. The complex relation between MAC and routing protocols is modeled, and novel results on this interaction are derived. For various network configurations, conditions under which routing decisions based on packet loss probability or delay lead to an unbalanced distribution of the traffic load across multi-hop paths are studied. It is shown that these routing decisions tend to direct traffic toward nodes with high packet generation rates, with potential catastrophic effects for the nodes energy consumption. It is concluded that heterogeneous traffic and limited carrier-sensing range play an essential role on the performance and that routing should account for the presence of dominant nodes to balance the traffic distribution across the network.

Adaptive IEEE 802.15.4 protocol for energy efficient, reliable and timely communications

The IEEE 802.15.4 standard for wireless sensor networks can support energy efficient, reliable, and timely packet transmission by tuning the medium access control parameters macMinBE, macMax-CSMABackoffs, and macMaxFrameRetries. Such a tuning is difficult, because simple and accurate models of the influence of these parameters on the probability of successful packet transmission, packet delay and energy consumption are not available. Moreover, it is not clear how to adapt the parameters to the changes of the network and traffic regimes by algorithms that can run on resource-constrained nodes. In this paper, an effective analytical model is used to derive an adaptive algorithm at the medium access control layer for minimizing the power consumption while guaranteeing reliability and delay constraints in the packet transmission. The algorithm does not require any modifications of the IEEE 802.15.4 standard and can be easily implemented on existing network nodes. Numerical results show that the analysis is accurate, that the proposed algorithm satisfies reliability and delay constraints, and ensures a longer lifetime of the network under both stationary and transient network conditions.

Fast-Lipschitz optimization with wireless sensor networks applications

Motivated by the need for fast computations demanded by wireless sensor networks, the new F-Lipschitz optimization theory is introduced for a novel class of optimization problems. These problems are defined by simple qualifying properties specified in terms of increasing objective function and contractive constraints. It is shown that feasible F-Lipschitz problems have always a unique optimal solution that satisfies the constraints at equality. The solution is obtained quickly by asynchronous algorithms of certified convergence. F-Lipschitz optimization can be applied to both centralized and distributed optimization. Compared to traditional Lagrangian methods, which often converge linearly, the convergence time of centralized F-Lipschitz problems is at least superlinear. Distributed F-Lipschitz algorithms converge fast, as opposed to traditional Lagrangian decomposition and parallelization methods, which generally converge slowly and at the price of many message passings. In both cases, the computational complexity is much lower than traditional Lagrangian methods. Examples of application of the new optimization method are given for distributed detection and radio power control in wireless sensor networks. The drawback of the F-Lipschitz optimization is that it might be difficult to check the qualifying properties. For more general optimization problems, it is suggested that it is convenient to have conditions ensuring that the solution satisfies the constraints at equality.