Active Low Intrusion Hybrid Monitor for Wireless Sensor Networks

Abstract

Several systems have been proposed to monitor wireless sensor networks (WSN). These systems may be active (causing a high degree of intrusion) or passive (low observability inside the nodes). This paper presents the implementation of an active hybrid (hardware and software) monitor with low intrusion. It is based on the addition to the sensor node of a monitor node (hardware part) which, through a standard interface, is able to receive the monitoring information sent by a piece of software executed in the sensor node. The intrusion on time, code, and energy caused in the sensor nodes by the monitor is evaluated as a function of data size and the interface used. Then different interfaces, commonly available in sensor nodes, are evaluated: serial transmission (USART), serial peripheral interface (SPI), and parallel. The proposed hybrid monitor provides highly detailed information, barely disturbed by the measurement tool (interference), about the behavior of the WSN that may be used to evaluate many properties such as performance, dependability, security, etc. Monitor nodes are self-powered and may be removed after the monitoring campaign to be reused in other campaigns and/or WSNs. No other hardware-independent monitoring platforms with such low interference have been found in the literature.

HMP: A Hybrid Monitoring Platform for Wireless Sensor Networks Evaluation

“…It was found in previous experiments [44] that the trap execution time depends on the amount of data that the MN must register for this event. The designer of the monitoring campaign decides the number of bytes to be registered in each event in order to study the system behavior.…”

“…Regarding the implementation of the Mon-Inf interface, this MN may use either a parallel interface, through GPIO (General Purpose Input/Output) pins, or a serial interface, such as UART (Universal Asynchronous Receiver / Transmitter) or SPI bus. In [44] it has been evaluated the high When the MN receives an event data from the probe, the Information Level applies a pre-established format to the stored information. Each monitoring campaign may choose and define the more suitable storage format, and provide it to the Information Layer in the MN by means of a template file stored in the SD memory.…”

“…Three parameters of performance are affected by this code: used memory, duty cycle (working time), and energy consumption. Energy intrusion has proven [44] to be directly related to the working time and the characteristics of the observed node. Therefore, this parameter has not been directly studied in this evaluation.…”

A Reference Model for Monitoring IoT WSN-Based Applications

“…In [29] an active low intrusion hybrid monitor for WSNs developed by the authors of this paper is presented. It consists of two elements: a software monitor running in observed ARM-based sensor nodes, and a monitor node attached to the latter which receives software traps issued by the former, in order to obtain relevant information about node operation.…”

Improved Scheduling Mechanisms for Synchronous Information and Energy Transmission

“…Wireless energy collecting (EC) is particularly important for wireless sensor networks (WSNs) because of the limited energy supply [1,2]. It is quite difficult and expensive to replace or charge the battery for the devices, especially in some special circumstances, so a sustainable energy supply is demanded.…”