Wireless Integrated Network Sensors

Barbara Theodorides April 15, 2003

Paper
G. J. Pottie and W. J. Kaiser, Wireless Integrated Network Sensors, Communications of ACM, 43(5), May 2000.

WINS
Initiated in 1993 at the UCLA, 1G fielded in 1996 Sponsored by DARPA LWIM program began in 1995 In 1998, WINS NG Distributed network Internet access to sensors, controls and processors Low-power signal processing, computation, and low-cost wireless networking RF communication over short distances ( < 30m ) Applications: Industries, transportation, manufacture, health care, environmental oversight, and safety & security.

A general picture
local area
low power networking

worldwide user

Internet

sensing

wireless communication

signal processing / event recognition

Concerned about
The Physical principles dense sensor network Energy & bandwidth constraints distributed & layered signal processing architecture WINS network architecture WINS nodes architecture

Physical Principles
When are distributed sensors better? A. Propagation laws for sensing
All signals decay with distance e.g. electromagnetic waves in free space (~ 1/d2)

in other media (absorption, scattering, dispersion)

distant sensor requires costly operations

In free space favor large array However, almost every scenario of interest
regardless the array size objects behind walls

distributed array

If the system is to detect objects reliably, it has to be distributed, whatever the networking cost

Physical Principles (cont)

What are the fundamental limits driving the design of a network of distributed sensors? B. Detection & Estimation
Detector: given a set of observables {xj} determines which of the hypotheses {hi} are true Target presence/absence: based on estimates parameters {fk} of {xj} Selected Fourier, wavelet transform coefficients Marginal improvement Formally: Decide on hi if Reliability: Complexity: p(hi | {fk}) > p(hj | {fk}) ji

#independent observations, SNR dimension of feature space, #hypotheses Either a longer set of independent observations or high SNR

Decrease the #features and the #hypotheses

Physical Principles (cont)

Use of practical Algorithms:
Apply deconvolution and target-separation machinery to exploit a distributed array (deal with only 1 target and no propagation dispersal effects)
- reduces feature space & #hypotheses

cons: complexity Deploy a dense sensor network

- homogeneous environment within the detection range - reduces #environmental features size of decision space attractive method

Physical Principles (cont)

C. Communication Constraints
Spatial separation (e.g. low lying antennas)
Surface roughness, reflecting & obstructing objects However spatial isolation, reuse of frequencies

Multipath propagation (reflections off multiple objects)

Recover ~ space, frequency, and time diversity But for static nodes, time diversity is not an option spatial diversity is difficult to obtain Diversity in frequency domain

Shadowing: dealt with by employing a multihop network

The greater the density, the closer the nodes, and the greater the likelihood of having a link with sufficiently small distance and shadowing losses.

Physical Principles (cont)

D. Energy Consumption
Limits to the energy efficiency of CMOS communications and signalprocessing circuits Limits on the power required to transmit reliably over a given distance
Networks should be designed so that radio is off as much of the time as possible and otherwise transmits only at the minimum required level

ASICs can clock at much lower speeds consume less energy

ASICs maintain a cost advantage

Signal-Processing Architecture
We want: low false-alarm & high detection probability
Processing Hierarchy Human

Sophisticated Methods
Collaboration of WINS nodes Higher-energy processing & sensing Energy thresholding
If application & infrastructure permit: process data locally / multihop routing

Precision Cost

Play the probability game only to the extent we have to

Signal-Processing Architecture (cont)

Application Specific
e.g. Remote security application
WINS node: 2 sensors (seismic & imaging capability)
Seismic senor requires little power constantly vigilant Simple energy detection triggers the cameras operation Collaborative WINS nodes (e.g. target location) Send image & seismic record to a remote observer

WINS node: simple processing at low power Radio: does not need to support continuous transmission of images

WINS Network Architecture

Characteristics
Support large numbers of sensor Low average bit rate communication ( < 1-100 Kbps ) Dense sensor distributions Exploit the short-distance separation multihop communication Protocols: designed so radios are off MAC address should include some variant of time-division access

Time-division protocol
Exchange small messages: performance information, synchronization, bandwidth reservation requests Abundant bandwidth few conflicts, simple mechanisms At least one low-power protocol suite has been developed feasible to achieve distributed low-power operation in a flat multihop network

WINS Network Architecture (cont)

Link Sensor Network to the Internet
Layering of the protocols (and devices) is needed
conventional network physical layers and their protocols and between the WINS physical layer and its low-power protocols

WINS Gateways: Support for the WINS network and access between

System Architect Responsibilities

Applications requirements (reduced operation power, improved bit rate, improved bit error rate, reduced cost) How can Internet protocols (TCP, IPv6) be employed?
- need to conserve energy, unreliability of physical channels

Where should the processing and the storage take place?

- at the source / reducing the amount of data to transmit

WINS Node Architecture

1993: Initiated at the UCLA
1G of field-ready WINS devices and software was fielded (1996)

1995 : DARPA sponsored

- the LWIM project multihop, self-assembled, wireless network
algorithms for operating at micropower levels - the joint, UCLA and Rockwell Science Center of Thousand Oaks, program platform for more sophisticated networking and signal processing algorithms (many types of sensors, less emphasis on power conservation)

Lesson: Separate real-time from higher-level functions

WINS Node Architecture (cont)

1998: WINS NG developed by the authors contiguous sensing, signal
processing for event detection, local control of actuators, event classification, communication at low power Event detection is contiguous micropower levels Event detected => alert process to identify the event Further processing? Alert remote user / neighboring node? Communication between WINS nodes
sensor actuator signal processing for event detection control Processing

event classification & identification

wireless internet interface

continuously vigilant operation

low-duty cycle operation

WINS Node Architecture (cont)

Further Generations (Future work):
Support plug-in Linux devices Small, limited sensing devices interact with WINS NG nodes in heterogeneous networks Scavenge energy from the environment photocells

Why WINS ?
Low power consumption ( 100 W average )
Separation of real-time from higher level functions Hierarchical signal-processing architecture

Application specific Communication facility ( WINS gateways )

Remote user

Scalable
Reduce amount of data to be send scalability to thousands of nodes per gateway

Conclusion
Densely distributed sensor networks (physical constraints) Layered and heterogeneous processing Application specific networking architectures Close intertwining of network processing Development platforms are now available