Toronto Networking Seminar

Abstract:

Since its introduction, the Wireless Sensor Network WSN concept has been regarded as a powerful tool for mission critical applications such as surveillance in inhospitable environments. The general approach in design of WSNs is based on rather standard, omni-directional communication hardware with very little attention paid to predictability of information flow and propagation. Empirical data supports the observation that while the performance of WSNs is acceptable at low loads, high load cases triggered with correlated events are not handled well in general. In this talk, we introduce a new WSN architecture based on the use of sectored antennas. With improved spatial reuse properties and extended communication ranges, sectored antennas are currently being considered for the use in real large-scale WSN deployments. We will first introduce an analytical study of information propagation in WSNs with directional antennas. In this study, we model how physical information propagation is related to the number of transmissions in the WSN. Our model provides a highly accurate probability distribution function of the Euclidian distance covered in a given number of transmissions. Then we introduce a practical cross-layer communication protocol for clusters of directional antennas. The cross-layer protocol carries both schedule based as well as random-access based channel access characteristics. The construction of communication paths and the timing of the use of communication links are determined at high levels by cluster heads, which are executed locally by individual nodes in the cluster. We also present preliminary results for this ongoing work.

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