Lecture 5:

Topology Control


Anish Arora
CIS788.11J
Introduction to Wireless Sensor Networks


Material uses slides from Paolo Santi and
Alberto Cerpa

2
Problems affected by link quality
Topology Control
Neighborhood Management
Routing
Time Synchronization
Aggregation
Application Management
3
References


Topology Control tutorial, Mobihoc04, Paolo Santi

SPAN, Benjie Chen, Kyle Jamieson, Robert Morris, Hari Balakrishnan,
MIT

GAF/CEC, Y. Xu, S. Bien, Y. Mori, J . Heidemann & D. Estrin, USC/ISI
UCLA

ASCENT, Alberto Cerpa and Deborah Estrin, UCLA

GS3: Scalable Self-configuration and Self-healing in Wireless
Networks, PODC 2002, Hongwei Zhang, Anish Arora

M. Demirbas, A.Arora, V.Mittal, FLOC: A Fast Local Clustering Service
for Wireless Sensor Networks DIWANS 2004
4
High density deployment is common
Even with minimal sensor coverage, we get a high density
communication network (radio range > typical sensor range)
Energy constraints
When not easily replenished
Power usage
Observation: radios consume about the same power in idle
state than Tx and Rx state
Chicken & egg problem: to save energy, radios must be
turned off (not simply reduce packet transmissions); but if
radios are turned off, nodes cannot receive messages
Why Control Communications Topology
5
Problem Statement(s)
1. Find an MCDS, i.e. a minimum subset of nodes that is both:
Set cover
Connected

2. Choose a transmit-power level whereby network is connected
per node or same for all nodes
with per node there is the issue of avoiding asymmetric links
cone-based algorithm:
node u transmits with the minimum power
u
s.t. there is at least
one neighbor in every cone of angle x centered at u
k-neighbors algorithm:
each node chooses nearest k neighbors for its subgraph
k is chosen s.t. the graph generated is connected w.h.p.
6
Problem Statement(s)
3. Find a minimum subset of nodes that provides some density
in each geographic region connectivity
well look at the examples of GAF, SPAN, GS
3
, ASCENT

4. Given a connected graph G, find a subgraph G which can
route messages between nodes in energy-efficient way
both unicast and broadcast spanners
reduces interference as well

Sub-problems:
Prune asymmetric links
Tolerate node perturbations
Load balance
7
Where should TC be positioned in the protocol stack?
No clear answer in the literature

One view:
Routing Layer
TC Layer
MAC Layer

Routing protocol may trigger TC execution (to get better routes)
Routing (structure) involves only active nodes

MAC protocol may trigger TC execution (if neighborhood changes)
TC controls coarse-grain duty-cycling, MAC controls fine-grain
Mode changes need to be coordinated to avoid conflicts

8
Assumptions: Radio/MAC
Circular or Isotropic Models: GS
3

Grid-based connectivity: GAF, GS
3

Radio/MAC dependencies:
802.11 Power Saving mode: Span
Promiscuous mode: ASCENT, CEC

9
Assumptions: Neighbor Information
Locality:
1-hop neighbor: GS
3
, ASCENT
n-hop neighbor (with various n > 1): GAF, CEC, Span
Dependency on routing: GS
3
, Span

Measurement-based: ASCENT, CEC
10
Properties: Reactivity to dynamics & load balancing
Local re-calculation of state: GS
3

Global re-calculation of state: Span
Local recovery: GS
3
, GAF, CEC, ASCENT
Explicit load balancing mechanisms: GS
3
, Span, GAF, CEC
11
SPAN
Goal: preserve fairness and capacity & still provide energy savings
SPAN elects coordinators from all nodes to create backbone
topology
Other nodes remain in power-saving mode and periodically check if
they should become coordinators
Tries to minimize # of coordinators while preserving network capacity
Depends on an ad-hoc routing protocol to get list of neighbors & the
connectivity matrix between them
Runs above the MAC layer and alongside routing
12
Coordinator Election & Announcement
Rule: if 2 neighbors of a non-coordinator node cannot reach each
other (either directly or via 1 or 2 coordinators), node becomes
coordinator
Announcement contention is resolved by delaying coordinator
announcements with a randomized backoff delay
delay = ((1 Er/Em) + (1 Ci/(Ni pairs)) + R)*Ni*T
Er/Em: energy remaining/max energy
Ni: number of neighbors for node i
Ci: number of connected nodes through node i
R: Random[0,1]
T: RTT for small packet over wireless link
13
Coordinator Withdrawal
Each coordinator periodically checks if it should withdraw as a coordinator

A node withdraws as coordinator if each pair of its neighbors can reach
each other directly of via some other coordinators

To ensure fairness, after a node has been a coordinator for some period of
time, it withdraws if every pair of nodes can reach each other through
other neighbors (even if they are not coordinators)

After sending a withdraw message, the old coordinator remains active for
a grace period to avoid routing loses until the new coordinator is elected
14
Performance Results
15
GAF/CEC: Geographical Adaptive Fidelity
Each node uses location information (provided by some orthogonal
mechanism) to associate itself to a virtual grid

All nodes in a virtual grid must be able to communicate to all nodes
in an adjacent grid

Assumes a deterministic radio range, a global coordinate system
and global starting point for grid layout

GAF is independent of the underlying ad-hoc routing protocol
16
Virtual Grid Size Determination
r: grid size, R: deterministic radio range
r
2
+ (2r)
2
s R
2

r s R/sqrt(5)
17
Parameters settings
enat: estimated node active time
enlt: estimated node lifetime
Td,Ta, Ts: discovery, active,
and sleep timers
Ta = enlt/2
Ts = [enat/2, enat]
Node ranking:
Active > discovery (only one node active per grid)
Same state, higher enlt --> higher rank (longer expected time first)
Node ids to break ties
18
Performance Results
19
CEC
Cluster-based Energy Conservation
Nodes are organized into overlapping clusters
A cluster is defined as a subset of nodes that are
mutually reachable in at most 2 hops


20
Cluster Formation
Cluster-head Selection: longest lifetime of all its neighbors
(breaking ties by node id)

Gateway Node Selection:
primary gateways have higher priority
gateways with more cluster-head neighbors have higher priority
gateways with longer lifetime have higher priority


21
Network Lifetime
22
Challenges for local healing of solid-disc clustering
Equi-radius solid-disc clustering with bounded overlaps
is not achievable in a distributed and local manner
) ( ( ( ( ) ) )
( ( ( (
) ) ) )
cascading
new node
A B
23
FLOC protocol
Solid-disc clustering with bounded overlaps is achievable
in a distributed and local manner for approximately equal
radius
Stretch factor, m2, produces partitioning that respects
solid-disc
Each clusterhead has all the nodes within unit radius of itself as
members, and is allowed to have nodes up to m away of itself


FLOC is locally self-healing, for m2
Faults and changes are contained within the respective
cluster or within the immediate neighboring clusters
24
FLOC program
By taking unit distance to be reliable comm. radius & m
be maximum comm. radius, FLOC
exploits the double-band nature of wireless radio-model
achieves communication- and energy-efficient clustering

FLOC achieves clustering in O(1) time regardless of the
size of the network
Time, T, depends only on the density of nodes & is constant
Through simulations and implementations, we suggest a
suitable value for T for achieving fast clustering without
compromising the quality of resulting clusters

25
Model
Geometric network, e.g., 2-D coordinate plane

Radio model is double-band *
Reliable communication within unit distance = in-band
Unreliable communication within 1 < d < m = out-band

Nodes have i-band/ o-band estimation capability
RSSI-based using signal-strength as indicator of distance
Statistics-based using average link quality as an indicator

Fault model
Fail-stop and crash
New nodes can join the network
26
Problem statement
A distributed, local, scalable, and self-stabilizing
clustering program, FLOC, to construct network partitions
such that
a unique node is designated as a leader of each cluster
all nodes in the i-band of each leader belong to that cluster
maximum distance of a node from its leader is m
each node belongs to a cluster
no node belongs to multiple clusters
27
Justification for stretch factor > 2
For m2 local healing is achieved: a new node is
either subsumed by one of the existing clusters,
or allowed to form its own cluster without disturbing
neighboring clusters
( ( ( ) ) ) )
new node subsumed
( ( (
( ) ) ) )
( ( ( ) ) ) ) ( ) (
new cluster
28
Basic FLOC program
Status variable at each node j:
idle : j is not part of any cluster and j is not a candidate
cand : j wants to be a clusterhead, j is a candidate
c_head : j is a clusterhead, j.cluster_id==j
i_band : j is an inner-band member of a clusterhead
j.cluster_id; a clusterhead itself is an i_band member
o_band :j is an outer-band member of j.cluster_id
The effects of the 6 actions on the status variable:
29
FLOC actions
1. idle random wait time from [0T] expired
become a cand and bcast cand msg
2. receiver of cand msg is within in-band its status is i_band
receiver sends a conflict msg to the cand
3. candidate hears a conflict msg
candidate becomes o_band for respective cluster
4. candidacy period expires
cand becomes c_head, and bcasts c_head message
5. idle c_head message is heard
become i_band or o_band resp.
6. receiver of c_head msg is within in-band is o_band
receiver joins cluster as i_band
30
FLOC is fast
Assumption: atomicity condition of candidacy is observed by T

Theorem: Regardless of the network size FLOC produces the
partitioning in T+ time

Proof:
An action is enabled at every node within at most T time
Once an action is enabled at a node, the node is assigned a
clusterhead within time
Once a node is assigned to a clusterhead, this property cannot be
violated
action 6 makes a node change its clusterhead to become an i-band
member, action 2 does not cause clusterhead to change
31
FLOC is locally-healing
Node failures
inherently robust to failure of non-clusterhead members
clusterhead failure detected via lease mechanism, the
orphaned nodes execute clustering ---see node additions

Node additions
either join existing cluster, or
form a new cluster without disturbing immediate neighboring
clusters
32
Extensions to basic FLOC algorithm
Extended FLOC algorithm ensures that solid-disc property is
satisfied even when atomicity of candidacy is violated
occasionally

Insight: Bcast is an atomic operation
Candidate that bcasts first locks the nodes in the vicinity for
time
Later candidates become idle again by dropping their candidacy
when they find some of the nodes are locked

4 additional actions to implement this idea
33
Simulation for determining T
Prowler, realistic wireless sensor network simulator
MAC delay 25ms

Tradeoffs in selection of T
Short T leads to network contention, and hence, message losses
Tradeoff between faster completion time and quality of clustering

Scalability wrt network size
T depends only on the node density
In our experiments, the degree of each node is between 4-12
a constant T is applicable for arbitrarily large-scale networks
34
Tradeoff in selection of T
0
5
10
15
20
25
30
35
40
0 5 10 15 20
T (sec)
N
u
m
b
e
r

o
f

a
t
o
m
i
c
i
t
y

v
i
o
l
a
t
i
o
n
s
35
Constant T regardless of network size
36
Implementation
Mica2 mote platform, 5-by-5 grid
Confirms simulation
37
Sample clustering with FLOC
38
GS
3
: Scalability via locality
Locality is hard for some graph problems
e.g., self-configuration and self-healing of
routing tree


An ideal goal for locality:
self-healing should be a function of the
size of perturbation (in time, space,
and energy)


Locality depends on model

6
5
4
3 3
2
2
1
6
5
4
3
1
2
0
14
5 0
7
2
8
10
1
3
6
12
9
4
11
13
39
System model
System
multiple small nodes and one big node, on a plane
node distribution
density: (- R
t

s.t. with high probability,
there are multiple nodes in any circular area of radius R
t
)
localization: relative location between nodes can be estimated

Perturbations
dynamic nodes
joins, leaves (deaths), state corruptions
mobile nodes
40
Problem: Geography-aware self-configuration
Geographic radius of clusters is crucial
for communication quality, energy dissipation, data aggregations &
applications

Problem statement
Given
R: ideal cell radius (R > R
t
)

Construct a set of cells , connected via a head node in each cell s.t.
radius of each cell is in [ R-c , R+c ] , where c = f (R
t
)
each node belongs to only one cell
cells and the connectivity graph over head nodes self-heal locally
41
Static networks
An ideal case:









In reality: no node may exist at some geometric centers (ILs),
but, with high probability there are nodes no more than R
t
away
from any IL
R
R 3
IL
1
IL
2
(IL = Ideal Location)
Rt
42
How to find the set of cell heads
Bottom-up ?
hard to guarantee the
placement and size of
clusters

Top-down w.r.t. big node
use diffusing computation
but, accumulation in
deviation of head location
from IL is a problem
H
0
GAP
R
t
i
43
Organizing neighboring clusters & heads
Deviation problem is handled locally
instead of using real locations, node i
uses its and its parents ILs
i calculates the ILs of next band cells in
its search region < LD , RD >
big node: <0
o
, 360
o
>
other nodes: <-60
o
-a , 60
o
+a> , where
a = Sin
-1
(R
t
/ R)
for each IL, i ranks nodes within R
t

radius of the IL (by <D, A>), and selects
the highest ranked node as the
corresponding cluster head
IL(i)
IL(p.i)
R
t
LD
RD
i
2
-60
o
60
o
R 3
search region
a
i
2
j A
D
R
t
GR
44
Summary: static networks
Cell structure is hexagonal
cell radius:


Time taken to form the structure is u(D
b
), where D
b
= the maximum
distance between the big node and the small nodes


Scalability in self-configuration:
local coordination: only with nodes within range
local knowledge: each node maintains info about a constant number of
nearby nodes
] ) 3 2 ( , ) 3 2 ( [
t t
R R R R +
t
R R 2 3 +
45
Dynamic networks
Dynamics include:
node join, leave (death), state corruption

Common vs. rare
common perturbations: node density is preserved
rare perturbations: node density is destroyed

Scalable self-healing is achieved via locality in:
intra-cell healing
inter-cell healing
sanity checking of state (invariants)
46
Local intra-cell healing
Head shift
upon head leaving (death)
local in a radius of R
t

Cell shift
upon the death of all the nodes in an area
of radius R
t

local in a radius of R
independent but consistent shift at
individual cells sliding of the global
head level structure
OIL
1
2
2
1
0
GR
R
t
R
IL
GR
R
t
R
47
Local inter-cell healing & sanity checking
Local inter-cell healing :
upon failure of intra-cell healing at head j,
first, the parent of j tries to find a new head j
if that fails, the children of j find new parents

Local sanity checking of state invariants :
upon detecting violation of the hexagonality property,
node corrects itself after checking with its neighbors
when state perturbation includes several nodes, the
perturbed region corrects itself from the outside going
in, and all nodes are corrected within time proportional
to size of perturbed region
48
Summary: dynamic networks
Cell radius
for cells not adjoining any gap:
for cells adjoining a gap:

Head tree is now minimum distance tree rooted at the
big node

Stabilization time from perturbed state: u(D
p
), where
D
p
= diameter of the continuously perturbed area
] ) 3 2 ( , ) 3 2 ( [
t t
R R R R +
] ) 3 2 ( , ) 3 2 ( [
p t t
d R R R R + +
49
Summary: dynamic networks (contd.)
Scalability in self-healing:
local fault-containment and healing
local knowledge

Local healing and fault-containment enables
stable cell structure
lengthened lifetime: O(n
c
) , where n
c
= the number of nodes
in a cell

50
Related work
Cellular hexagon structure (Mac Donald 79)
Preconfigured & not considering self-healing

LEACH (Heinzelman et al 00)
No guarantee about the placement and size of clusters
Perturbations dealt with by globally repeating the whole
clustering process

Logical-radius based clustering (in Banerjee 01)
non-local cluster maintenance, and no consideration of state
corruption
only logical radius long links and link asymmetry are possible
multiple rounds of diffusion
51
ASCENT
Adaptive Self-Configuring sEnsor Networks Topologies

Observation: different applications may require the underlying
topology to have different characteristics. For example:
Minimal
Homogeneous with a certain degree of connectivity
Heterogeneous with different degrees of connectivity in different regions

Examples of these different regions may be:
Along a data flow path
Avoiding a data flow path
In the border of an event of interest

Input: application tolerance specified in terms of acceptable loss rate
at any node
52
Model
Adapt to empirical measurements of link quality: each node assesses
its connectivity & adapts its participation in the multi-hop topology
based on the measured operating region

Assumptions: ASCENT needs to
turn off the radio (sleep state)
turn the NIC/MAC in promiscuous mode (passive state)

ASCENT runs on top of MAC and below routing; does not uses any
information gathered by routing

53
ASCENT Basics
Node state: active or passive
Active nodes are in topology & forward data packets (using
orthogonal routing mechanism that runs on topology)
Passive nodes can sleep or collect network measurements
Each node measures # of neighbors and packet loss locally
Each node then decides to join the network topology or to adapt
(e.g. reducing its duty cycle to save energy)

(b) Self-configuration transition (a) Communication Hole (c) Final State
Help
Messages
Data Message
Sink
Source
Sink
Source
Neighbor
Announcements
Messages
Data
Message
Sink Source
Active Neighbor
Passive Neighbor

54
State Transitions
Test
Passive
Sleep
Active
after Tt
after Tp
after Ts
neighbors < NT
and
loss > LT
loss < LT & help
neighbors > NT (high ID for ties)
or
loss > loss T
0

NT: neighbor threshold
LT: loss threshold
Tx: state timer values (x = p: passive, s: sleep, t: test)
55
Details
Each node adds a sequence number per packet (for loss detection)

Neighbor estimator: based on a neighbor loss threshold (NLT) = 1
1/N (N: number of neighbors in the previous cycle)

Neighbor threshold value (NT) determines the average degree of
connectivity in the network

Loss threshold determines the maximum data loss application can
tolerate

Relation between Tp/Ts (passive & sleep timers) determines amount
of energy savings and convergence time
56
Performance Results
Energy Savings (normalized to the Active case, all nodes turn on) as a function of
density. ASCENT provides energy savings up to 5.5 times for high density scenarios
57
NT: neighbor threshold
Tp: passive state timer
Ts: sleep state timer
Sleep: power radio off
Idle: power radio on
o = Tp/Ts
| = Sleep/Idle = 0.004
ASCENT Energy Savings Analysis
Ts Tp
Ts
Sleep NT n
Ts Tp
Tp
Idle NT n Idle NT
Idle n
n ES
+
+
+
+
=
* * ) ( * * ) ( *
*
) (
1
* ) (
) (
+
+
+
=
o
| o
NT n NT
n
n ES
| o
o
+
+
=

1
lim ES
n
63
Topology Control from a Sensing Perspective
So far we have considered only the communications perspective

Sensing coverage model:
typically unit disk sensing
note: depends on object being sensed

Node deployment model:
deterministic with (no failures or with isolated failures)
approximated by a pdf or is random (as a result of rampant errors)

Coverage requirements:
Point coverage (deterministic or probabilistic guarantee)
Barrier coverage (deterministic or probabilistic guarantee)
Worst-case coverage: least exposed path
Tracking coverage: any uncovered path has length at most l
64
Sensing Coverage References
Survey:
Coverage in Wireless Sensor Network, Mihaela Cardei, Jie Wu

For 1-coverage:
Pater Hall, "An Introduction to the Theory of Coverage
Processes, 1988

For k-coverage:
Santosh Kumar and Balogh, Mobisys 2004

For k-coverage poisson deployment:
Honghai Zhang and Jennifer Hou, Mobihoc 2004

65
Coverage Results
1-point coverage with deterministic placement:
hexagonal layout is optimal

k-point coverage with deterministic placement :
question of optimal placement is open

k-point probabilistic coverage:

almost always k-coverage for poisson deployment
ntr
2
ln(n) + k ln(ln(n)) + (error term)
where n is #sensors and r is sensing radius

almost always k-coverage for random uniform deployment
has essentially same result
66
Coverage Algorithms
Checking whether network is not suitably covered
point coverage violation check is possible locally

Maintaining coverage via sleep-wakeup
optimal scheme is NP-Complete, if deployment unknown
(so heuristics used)
random independent scheduling, if deployment uniformly random
sentry rotation between redundant nodes in each cluster/region
67
Both Communication and Sensing Topology Control
Relation between sensing radius and communication radius

If Comm radius 2 x Sensing radius
then (k-coverage k-connectivity)