Distributed on-demand address assignment in wireless sensor networks

Abstract

Sensor networks consist of autonomous wireless sensor nodes that are networked together in an ad hoc fashion. The tiny nodes are equipped with substantial processing capabilities, enabling them to combine and compress their sensor data. The aim is to limit the amount of network traffic, and as such conserve the nodes' limited battery energy. However, due to the small packet payload, the MAC header is a significant, and energy-costly, overhead. To remedy this, we propose a novel scheme for a MAC address assignment. The two key features which make our approach unique are the exploitation of spatial address reuse and an encoded representation of the addresses in data packets. To assign the addresses, we develop a purely distributed algorithm that relies solely on local messsage exchanges. Other salient features of our approach are the ability to handle unidirectional links and the excellent scalability of both the assignment algorithm and address representation. In typical scenarios, the MAC overhead is reduced by a factor of three compared to existing approaches.

Distributed global ID assignment for wireless sensor networks

“…In [8], Schurgers, et al, developed a distributed allocation scheme where local addresses are spatially reused to reduce the required number of bits. The preexisting MAC addresses are converted into locally unique addresses.…”

“…This solution assumes the preexistence of globally unique addresses, which our algorithm does not assume. Our solution can be used to assign these global addresses prior to use of the method in [8]. Our proposed solution allows for asynchronous wake-up.…”

Virtual Grid Spatial Reusing Algorithm for MAC Address Assignment in Wireless Sensor Network

“…E operation_x is the cost of instruction for corresponding operation. As the overhead of instruction is very low [3] (see Table 2), the energy cost is fairly limited.…”

“…Curt Schurgers et al describe a MAC address assignment mechanism for sensor networks [3,4]. All of the sensor nodes reuse the limited address spatially and the encoded address representation reduces the size of the MAC address ulteriorly.…”

A Distributed Method to Localization for Mobile Sensor Networks based on the convex hull

“…Location information can also be used to facilitate network functions such as packet routing [8] [9] and collaborative signal processing [10], in which the complexity and processing overhead can be substantially reduced. Further, each node can be uniquely identified with its position, thus exempting the difficulty of assigning a unique ID before deployment [11]. However, many challenges exist in designing effective and efficient sensor self-positioning schemes for sensor networks.…”