ADHOC AND WIRELESS SENSOR

NETWORKS
 SYLLABUS
 UNIT- 1 : Ad Hoc Wireless Networks
 UNIT- 2: MAC Protocols for Ad Hoc Wireless
Networks
 UNIT- 3: Routing Protocols for Ad Hoc Wireless
Networks
 UNIT-4 :Multi-cast routing in Ad Hoc Wireless
Networks
 UNIT-5: Transport layer in Ad Hoc Wireless
Networks
 UNIT-6: Management in Ad Hoc Wireless Networks
BOOK

• C. S. Ram Murthy, B. S. Manoj, Ad Hoc Wireless

Networks: Architectures and Protocols, Prentice
Hall of India , 2nd Edition, 2005
OR
 C. Siva Ram Murthy and B. S. Manoj, Ad hoc
Wireless Networks Architecture and Protocols,
2nd edition, Pearson Edition, 2007
https://www.google.co.in/books/edition/Ad_Hoc_Wireless_Networks_Architectures_A/_dV8z-CZldgC?
hl=en&gbpv=1&dq=3.%09C.+Siva+Ram+Murthy+and+B.+S.+Manoj,+Ad+hoc+Wireless+Networks+Architecture+and+Protocols,
+2nd+edition,+Pearson+Edition,+2007+PDF&printsec=frontcover
 UNIT-1
• Introduction
-Cellular and Ad Hoc Wireless Networks
-Applications of Ad Hoc Wireless Networks

• Issues in Ad Hoc Wireless Networks

• Ad Hoc Wireless Internet.
 Ad-Hoc Networks
• Ad hoc networks are mostly wireless local area
networks (LANs). The devices communicate
with each other directly instead of relying on a
base station or access points as in wireless
LANs for data transfer co-ordination. Each
device participates in routing activity, by
determining the route using the routing
algorithm and forwarding data to other
devices via this route
Difference Between Cellular and Ad-hoc
Networks
 Examples of ADHOC Networks
• Bluetooth
• IEEE 802.11 ( Wireless LAN Standard)
• HIPERLAN 2
Classification
VANET’s
Wireless Mesh networks
SPAN’s
Wireless Sensor Networks
 Applications of ADHOC Networks
• Military Applications
• Collaborative and distributed Networking
• Emergency Operations
• Wireless Mesh Networks
• Wireless Sensor Networks
• Hybrid Wireless Networks
 Military Applications
 Setting up a fixed infrastructure for communication among a
group of soldiers in enemy territories or in inhospitable terrains
may not be possible.
 In such environments, ad hoc wireless networks provide the
required communication mechanism quickly.
 Another application in this area can be the coordination of
military objects moving at high speeds such as fleets of airplanes
or warships. Such applications require quick and reliable
communication.
 But, the primary nature of the communication required in a military
environment enforces certain important requirements on ad hoc
wireless networks, namely, reliability, efficiency, secure
communication, and support for multicast routing.
Collaborative and Distributive Computing
 The requirement of a temporary communication infrastructure for
quick communication with minimal configuration among a group
of people in a conference or gathering necessitates the formation
of an ad hoc wireless network.
 For example, consider a group of researchers who want to share
their research findings or presentation materials during a
conference, or a lecturer distributing notes to the class on the fly.
In such cases, the formation of an ad hoc wireless network with
the necessary support for reliable multicast routing can serve the
purpose.
 Devices used for such applications could typically be laptops with
add-on wireless sinterface cards, enhanced personal digital
assistants (PDAs), or mobile devices with high processing power.
In the presence of such heterogeneity, interoperability is an
important issue.
 Emergency Operations
 Ad hoc wireless networks are very useful in emergency
operations such as search and rescue, crowd control, and
commando operations.
 The major factors that favor ad hoc wireless networks for such
tasks are self-configuration of the system with minimal
overhead, independent of fixed or centralized infrastructure,
the nature of the terrain of such applications, the freedom and
flexibility of mobility, and the unavailability of conventional
communication infrastructure
 Ad hoc networks for such applications must have little to no
delay, should be scalable, and fault tolerant with real-time
communication capability
 Wireless Mesh Networks
 Wireless mesh networks are ad hoc wireless networks that are
formed to provide an alternate communication infrastructure
for mobile or fixed nodes/users, without the spectrum reuse
constraints and the requirements of network planning of
cellular networks.
 They provide alternate paths for data transfer where the central
nodes fail. They provide economical data transfer with
freedom of mobility. They investment required is also less.
 Wireless Sensor Networks
The issues that make sensor networks a distinct category of ad
hoc wireless networks are the following:
1. Mobility of nodes
 Mobility is not mandatory in sensor networks
 It depends on the application
2. Size of the network
 Size is usually larger than typical ad-hoc networks
3. Density of Deployment
 Density of nodes depends on the application
4. Power Constraints

 Sensor networks have different power constraints that need to

be met when deployed in the field.

 This is mainly because the sensor nodes are expected to

operate in harsh environmental or geographical conditions, with
minimum or no human supervision and maintenance.

 In certain cases, the recharging of the energy source is

impossible Running such a network, with nodes powered by a
battery source with limited energy, demands very efficient
protocols at network, data link, and physical layer
• The power sources used in sensor networks can be classified into the
following three categories:

– Replenishable power source: In certain applications of sensor

networks, the power source can be replaced when the existing source is fully
drained (e.g., wearable sensors that are used to sense body parameters).

– Non-replenishable power source: In some specific applications of

sensor networks, the power source cannot be replenished once the network
has been deployed. The replacement of the sensor node is the only solution
to it (e.g., deployment of sensor nodes in a remote, hazardous terrain).

– Regenerative power source: Power sources employed in sensor networks

that belong to this category have the capability of regenerating power from
the physical parameter under measurement. For example, the sensor
employed for sensing temperature at a power plant can use power sources
that can generate power by using appropriate transducers .
5. Data fusion

The limited bandwidth and power constraints demand aggregation

of bits and information at the intermediate relay nodes that are
responsible for relaying.
Data fusion refers to the aggregation of multiple packets into one
before relaying it.
This mainly aims at reducing the bandwidth consumed by
redundant headers of the packets and reducing the media access
delay involved in transmitting multiple packets.
Information fusion aims at processing the sensed data at the
intermediate nodes and relaying the outcome to the monitor node.

.
6. Traffic Distribution
The communication traffic pattern varies with the domain of
application in sensor networks.

For example, the environmental sensing application generates short

periodic packets indicating the status of the environmental parameter
under observation to a central monitoring station. This kind of traffic
demands low bandwidth.

The sensor network employed in detecting border intrusions in a

military application generates traffic on detection of certain events; in
most cases these events might have time constraints for delivery.

Ad hoc wireless networks generally carry user traffic such as

digitized and packetized voice stream or data traffic, which demands
higher bandwidth
 Hybrid Wireless Networks
• One of the major application areas of ad hoc wireless
networks is in hybrid wireless architectures such as multi-
hop cellular networks(MCN) and integrated cellular ad
hoc relay (ICAR) networks .
• The primary concept behind cellular networks is
geographical channel reuse. Several techniques such
as cell sectoring, cell resizing, and multi tier cells
have been proposed to increase the capacity of
cellular networks. Most of these schemes also
increase the equipment cost
• MCNs combine the reliability and support of fixed
base stations of cellular networks with flexibility
and multi-hop relaying of ad hoc wireless
networks.
• The MCN architecture is depicted in Figure 5.6. In
this architecture, when two nodes (which are not
in direct transmission range) in the same cell
want to communicate with each other, the
connection is routed through multiple wireless
hops over the intermediate nodes. Such hybrid
wireless networks can provide high capacity
resulting in lowering the cost of communication
to less than that in single-hop cellular networks
The major advantages of hybrid wireless networks are as follows
 Higher capacity than cellular networks obtained due to the better channel
reuse provided by reduction of transmission power, as mobile nodes use a
power range that is a fraction of the cell radius.

 Increased flexibility and reliability in routing. The flexibility is in terms of

selecting the best suitable nodes for routing, which is done through
multiple mobile nodes or through base stations or by a combination of
both. The increased reliability is in terms of resilience to failure of base
stations, in which case a node can reach other nearby base stations using
multi-hop paths.
 Better coverage and connectivity in holes (areas that are not covered due to
transmission difficulties such as antenna coverage or the direction of
antenna) of a cell can be provided by means of multiple hops through
intermediate nodes in the cell.
 Issues in Ad hoc Wireless Networking
• Medium Access Scheme
• Routing
• Multicasting
• Transport layer Protocols
• Pricing Scheme
• Quality of service Provisioning
• Self Organization
• Addressing and Service discovery
 Issues in Ad Hoc Wireless Networking
(contd.)

• Energy Management
• Security
• Scalability
• Deployment Considerations
The data link layer is further divided into two sub layers:

The Logical Link Control (LLC) sub layer is responsible for

flow controls and error controls that ensure error-free and accurate data
transmission between the network nodes.

The Media Access Control (MAC) sub layer is responsible for managing
access and permissions to transmit data between the network nodes.
 Medium Access Scheme
The major issues to be considered in designing MAC protocol
for ad-hoc wireless
 Distributed Operation
 Synchronization
 Hidden Terminals
 Exposed Terminals
 Throughput
 Access Delay
 Fairness
 Real time traffic support
 Resource reservation
 Ability to measure resource Availability
 Capability for power control
 Adaptive rate control
 Distributed Operation
 The ad hoc wireless networks usually have no
centralized coordination .
 The MAC protocol design should be fully distributed
involving minimum control overhead.
 In the case of polling-based MAC protocols, partial
coordination is required.
 Synchronization
 Time Synchronization needs to be considered for TDMA
based systems

Hidden and Exposed Terminal

• Hidden Terminal

In wireless LANs ( wireless local area networks), the hidden terminal

problem is a transmission problem that arises when two or more
stations who are out of range of each other transmit simultaneously to
a common recipient. This is prevalent in decentralized systems where
there aren’t any entity for controlling transmissions

• Exposed Terminal

The above diagram shows that a transmission is going on from B to

A. C falsely concludes that the above transmission will cause
interference and so stops its transmission attempts to D. However, the
interference would not have occurred since the transmission from C
to D is out of range of B. This prevention of transmission is called
exposed terminal problem.
Q1. Describe a common method used in alleviating the
hidden terminal problem at the MAC layer.
• An algorithm called the Multiple Access with Collision
Avoidance (MACA) is deployed to solve the hidden terminal
problem in wireless networks and avoid collisions.
• The key idea behind MACA is to have the sender and
receiver exchange control frames before the sender
transmits any data.
• This exchange informs all nearby nodes that a transmission is
about to initiate. Two control frames are used in the exchange.
These are as follows:
 Request to Send (RTS)
 Clear to Send (CTS)
The exchange of the CTS and RTS frames is illustrated below. Node A
acts as the sender and node B acts as the receiver. Node C doesn't get
the RTS from A since it's not in A's coverage area. However, C does
receive the CTS from B. Therefore, C knows not to send B any data
because B is about to begin receiving the transmission from A.
• Throughput
The MAC protocol employed in ad hoc wireless networks
should attempt to maximize the throughput of the system.

The important considerations for throughput enhancement are

 minimizing the occurrence of collisions,

 maximizing channel utilization, and
 minimizing control overhead.
Access delay:

The access delay refers to the average delay that any

packet experiences to get transmitted. The MAC protocol
should attempt to minimize the delay.

Fairness:

Fairness refers to the ability of the MAC protocol to

provide an equal share or weighted share of the bandwidth
to all competing nodes. Fairness can be either node-based
or flow-based.
• Real-time traffic support:

In a contention-based channel access environment, without any

central coordination, with limited bandwidth, and with location-
dependent contention, supporting time-sensitive traffic such as
voice, video, and real-time data requires explicit support from the
MAC protocol.

• Resource reservation:

The provisioning of QoS defined by parameters such as

bandwidth, delay, and jitter requires reservation of resources such
as bandwidth, buffer space, and processing power. The inherent
mobility of nodes in ad hoc wireless networks makes such
reservation of resources a difficult task. A MAC protocol should be
able to provide mechanisms for supporting resource reservation
and QoS provisioning.
• Ability to measure resource availability:

In order to handle the resources such as bandwidth efficiently and

perform call admission control based on their availability, the
MAC protocol should be able to provide an estimation of resource
availability at every node. This can also be used for making
congestion-control decisions.

• Capability for power control:

The transmission power control reduces the energy consumption at

the nodes, causes a decrease in interference at neighboring nodes,
and increases frequency reuse. Support for power control at the
MAC layer is very important in the ad hoc wireless environment.
• Adaptive rate control:

This refers to the variation in the data bit rate achieved over a
channel. A MAC protocol that has adaptive rate control can make
use of a high data rate when the sender and receiver are nearby and
adaptively reduce the data rate as they move away from each other.

• Use of directional antennas:

This has many advantages that include increased spectrum reuse,

reduction in interference, and reduced power consumption. Most of
the existing MAC protocols that use omnidirectional antennas do
not work with directional antennas.
 ROUTING
The responsibilities of a routing protocol include exchanging the
route information; finding a feasible path to a destination based on
criteria such as hop length, minimum power required, and lifetime
of the wireless link; gathering information about the path breaks;
mending the broken paths expending minimum processing power
and bandwidth; and utilizing minimum bandwidth.
The major challenges that a routing protocol faces are as
follows:
 Mobility
 Bandwidth Constraint
 Error Prone and Shared Channel
 Location Dependent Contention
 Requirements of a Routing Protocol

•Minimum route acquisition delay:

The route acquisition delay for a node that does not have a route to a particular destination
node should be as minimal as possible. This delay may vary with the size of the network and
the network load.

• Quick route reconfiguration:

The unpredictable changes in the topology of the network require that the routing protocol
be able to quickly perform route reconfiguration in order to handle path breaks and
subsequent packet losses.

• Loop-free routing:

This is a fundamental requirement of any routing protocol to avoid unnecessary wastage of

network bandwidth. In ad hoc wireless networks, due to the random movement of nodes,
transient loops may form in the route thus established. A routing protocol should detect such
Distributed routing approach:

An ad hoc wireless network is a fully distributed wireless network and the use of
centralized routing approaches in such a network may consume a large amount of
bandwidth.

• Minimum control overhead:

The control packets exchanged for finding a new route and maintaining existing
routes should be kept as minimal as possible. The control packets consume
precious bandwidth and can cause collisions with data packets, thereby reducing
network throughput.

• Scalability:

Scalability is the ability of the routing protocol to scale well (i.e., perform
efficiently) in a network with a large number of nodes. This requires minimization
of control overhead and adaptation of the routing protocol to the network size.
Provisioning of QoS:

The routing protocol should be able to provide a certain level of QoS as demanded
by the nodes or the category of calls. The QoS parameters can be bandwidth, delay,
jitter, packet delivery ratio, and throughput. Supporting differentiated classes of
service may be of importance in tactical operations.

• Support for time-sensitive traffic:

Tactical communications and similar applications require support for time-sensitive

traffic. The routing protocol should be able to support both hard real time and soft
real-time traffic.

• Security and privacy:

The routing protocol in ad hoc wireless networks must be resilient to threats and
vulnerabilities. It must have inbuilt capability to avoid resource consumption, denial
of-service, impersonation, and similar attacks possible against an ad hoc wireless
network.
 Multicasting
The major issues in designing multicast routing protocols are as follows:

• Robustness: The multicast routing protocol must be able to recover and

reconfigure quickly from potential mobility-induced link breaks thus
making it suitable for use in highly dynamic environments.

• Efficiency: A multicast protocol should make a minimum number of

transmissions to deliver a data packet to all the group members.

• Control overhead: The scarce bandwidth availability in ad hoc wireless

networks demands minimal control overhead for the multicast session.

• Quality of service: QoS support is essential in multicast routing because,

in most cases, the data transferred in a multicast session is time-sensitive.
• Efficient group management:
Group management refers to the process of accepting multicast
session members and maintaining the connectivity among them until
the session expires. This process of group management needs to be
performed with minimal exchange of control messages.

• Scalability:
The multicast routing protocol should be able to scale for a network
with a large number of nodes.

• Security:

Authentication of session members and prevention of non-members

from gaining unauthorized information play a major role in military
communications.
 Transport Layer Protocols
The main objectives of the transport layer protocols include

 setting up and maintaining end-to end connections,

 reliable end-to-end delivery of data packets,
 flow control
 congestion control.

TCP and UDP are the two protocols used at Transport layer to carry
out these functions
The simple connectionless transport layer protocols (e.g., UDP)
neither performs flow control and congestion control nor provide
reliable data transfer.

Such unreliable connectionless transport layer protocols do not take

into account the current network status such as congestion at the
intermediate links, the rate of collision, or other similar factors
affecting the network throughput.

This behavior of the transport layer protocols increases the

contention of the already-choked wireless link, Connectionless
transport layer protocols, unaware of this situation, increase the load
in the network, degrading the network performance.
The major performance degradation faced by a reliable
connection-oriented transport layer protocol such as
transmission control protocol (TCP) in an ad-hoc
wireless network arises due to

 frequent path breaks

 presence of stale routing information,
 high channel error rate, and
 frequent network partitions.
 Frequent Path Breaks
 Due to the mobility of nodes and limited transmission range,
an existing path to a destination node experiences frequent
path breaks.
 Each path break results in route reconfiguration that depends
on the routing protocol employed.
 The process of finding an alternate path or reconfiguring the
broken path might take longer than the retransmission timeout
of the transport layer at the sender, resulting in retransmission
of packets and execution of the congestion control algorithm.
 The congestion control algorithm decreases the size of the
congestion window, resulting in low throughput.
 Stale Routing Information
• The latency associated with the reconfiguration of a broken
path and the use of route caches result in stale route
information at the nodes.
• Hence the packets will be forwarded through multiple paths to
a destination, causing an increase in the number of out-of-
order packets.
• Also, multipath routing protocols employ multiple paths
between a source destination pair. Out-of-order packet arrivals
force the receiver of the TCP connection to generate duplicate
acknowledgments (ACKs). On receiving duplicate ACKs, the
sender invokes the congestion control algorithm.
 High Channel Error Rates
Wireless channels are inherently unreliable due to the high
probability of errors caused by interference.

In addition to the error due to the channel noise, the presence of

hidden terminals also contributes to the increased loss of TCP
data packets or ACKs.

When the TCPACK is delayed more than the round-trip timeout,

the congestion control algorithm is invoked.
 Frequent Network Partitions
Due to the mobility of the nodes, ad hoc wireless networks
frequently experience isolation of nodes from the rest of the
network or occurrence of partitions in the network.

If a TCP connection spans across multiple partitions, that is, the

sender and receiver of the connection are in two different
partitions, all the packets get dropped.

This tends to be more serious when the partitions exist for a long
duration, resulting in multiple retransmissions of the TCP
packets and subsequent increase in the retransmission timers.
Such a behavior causes long periods of inactivity even when a
transient partition in the network lasts for a short while .
 Pricing Scheme
An ad hoc wireless network's functioning depends on the presence of
relaying nodes and their willingness to relay other nodes' traffic.

Even if the node density is sufficient enough to ensure a fully

connected network, a relaying neighbor node may not be interested in
relaying a call and may just decide to power down.

Assume that an optimal route from node A to node B passes through

node C, and node C is not powered on. Then node A will have to set up
a costlier and non-optimal route to B. The non-optimal path consumes
more resources and affects the throughput of the system.
As the intermediate nodes in a path that relay the data packets
expend their resources such as battery charge and computing power,
they should be properly compensated.

Hence pricing schemes that incorporate service compensation or

service reimbursement are required.

Ad hoc wireless networks employed for special tasks such as

military missions, rescue operations, and law enforcement do not
require such pricing schemes, whereas the successful commercial
deployment of ad hoc wireless networks requires billing and
pricing.

The obvious solution to provide participation guarantee is to

provide incentives to forwarding nodes.
 Quality of Service Provisioning
Quality of service (QoS) is the performance level of services
offered by a service provider or a network to the user. QoS
provisioning often requires negotiation between the host and
the network, resource reservation schemes, priority
scheduling, and call admission control.
QoS Parameters
Based on the applications the parameters used to determine the QoS
are decided
 For multimedia applications, the bandwidth and delay are the key
parameters
 Military applications have the additional requirements of security and
reliability.
 For applications such as emergency search-and-rescue operations,
availability is the key QoS parameter. Multiple link disjoint paths can be
the major requirement for such applications.
 For hybrid wireless networks maximum available link life, delay,
channel utilization, and bandwidth as the key parameters for QoS.
 Finally, applications such as communication among the nodes in a sensor
network require that the transmission among them results in minimum
energy consumption, hence battery life and energy conservation can be
the prime QoS parameters here.
QoS Aware Routing
• The routing algorithm picks up the routes
based on the QoS parameters
• Parameters that can be considered for
routing decisions are :- network throughput,
packet delivery ratio, reliability, delay, jitter,
packet loss rate, bit error rate, and path loss.
 Self-Organization
Ad hoc wireless network should exhibit is organizing and
maintaining the network by itself.
The major activities that an ad hoc wireless network is required
to perform for self-organization are

 neighbour discovery,
 topology organization,
 topology reorganization.
 Neighbour discovery phase
every node in the network gathers information about its neighbours
and maintains that information in appropriate data structures. This
may require periodic transmission of short packets named beacons,
or promiscuous snooping on the channel for detecting activities of
neighbours.

 Topology organization phase

every node in the network gathers information about the entire
network or a part of the network in order to maintain topological
information.
Topology Reorganization Phase

• During the topology reorganization phase, the ad hoc wireless

networks require updating the topology information by
incorporating the topological changes occurred in the network
due to the mobility of nodes, failure of nodes, or complete
depletion of power sources of the nodes

• The reorganization consists of two major activities.

 First is the periodic or a periodic exchange of topological
information.
 Second is the adaptability (recovery from major topological
changes in the network).
 Security

• The security of communication in ad hoc

wireless networks is very important, especially
in military applications.
• The lack of any central coordination and
shared wireless medium makes them more
vulnerable to attacks than wired networks
 In Passive Attacks intruders do not
Active Attacks Passive Attacks interfere with network operation. They
simply snoop around and steal
Internal Attack information
(Compromised nodes)

In active attacks the network operation

is being interfered and destroyed. If
nodes within the network are
External Attack responsible, it is an internal attack and
such nodes are called as compromised
nodes

If nodes outside of the network are

responsible for the attack then its an
external attack
• The major security threats that exist in ad hoc wireless
networks are as follows:

 DOS (Denial of Service)

 Resource Consumption
 Host Impersonation
 Information disclosure
 Interference (Jamming)
• Denial of Service

• The attack effected by making the network resource

unavailable for service to other nodes, either by
consuming the bandwidth or by overloading the system,
is known as denial of service (DoS).

• A simple scenario in which a DoS attack interrupts the

operation of ad hoc wireless networks is by keeping a
target node busy by making it process unnecessary
packets.
Resource consumption:
The scarce availability of resources in ad hoc wireless network
makes it an easy target for internal attacks, particularly aiming at
consuming resources available in the network.
The major types of resource-consumption attacks are
– Energy depletion:
Since the nodes in ad hoc wireless networks are highly
constrained by the energy source, this type of attack is basically
aimed at depleting the battery power of critical nodes by
directing unnecessary traffic through them.
– Buffer overflow:
The buffer overflow attack is carried out either by filling the
routing table with unwanted routing entries or by consuming the
data packet buffer space with unwanted data. Such attacks can
lead to a large number of data packets being dropped, leading to
the loss of critical information.
Host Impersonation
 A compromised internal node can act as another node and
respond with appropriate control packets to create wrong
route entries, and can terminate the traffic meant for the
intended destination node.
Information Disclosure
A compromised node can act as an informer by deliberate
disclosure of confidential information to unauthorized nodes.
Information such as the amount and the periodicity of traffic
between a selected pair of nodes and pattern of traffic changes
can be very valuable for military applications.
 Addressing and Service Discovery
 A globally unique address is required for communication
 Auto configuration of addresses is essential to avoid duplicate
addresses.
 In order to detect duplicate addresses a mechanism is
necessary.
 Nodes in the network should be able to locate services that
other nodes provide. Hence efficient service advertisement
mechanisms are necessary.
 Provisioning of certain kinds of services demands
authentication, billing, and privacy that in turn require the
service discovery protocols
 Energy Management
 Energy management is defined as the process of managing the
Types ofofEnergy
sources and consumers Management
energy in a node or in the network
as a whole for enhancing the lifetime of the network
Transmission Processor
Battery Energy Device Power
Power Power
Management Management
Management Management
 Transmission Power Management
 The power consumed by the radio frequency (RF) module of a
mobile node is determined by several factors such as the state
of operation, the transmission power, and the technology used
for the RF circuitry.
 The state of operation refers to the transmit, receive, and sleep
modes of the operation.
 The transmission power is determined by the reachability
requirement of the network, the routing protocol, and the
MAC protocol employed.
 The RF hardware design should ensure minimum power
consumption in all the three states of operation.
 Power conservation responsibility lies across the data link,
network, transport, and application layers.
 By designing a data link layer protocol that reduces unnecessary
retransmissions, by preventing collisions, by switching to
standby mode or sleep mode whenever possible, and by reducing
the transmit/receive switching, power management can be
performed at the data link layer
 The network layer routing protocols can consider battery life and
relaying load of the intermediate nodes while selecting a path so
that the load can be balanced across the network, in addition to
optimizing and reducing the size and frequency of control
packets.
 At the transport layer, reducing the number of retransmissions,
and recognizing and handling the reason behind the packet losses
locally, can be incorporated into the protocols. At the application
layer, the power consumption varies with applications
 Battery Energy Management
 The battery management is aimed at extending the battery life
of a node by taking advantage of its chemical properties,
discharge patterns, and by the selection of a battery from a set
of batteries that is available for redundancy.
 Controlling the charging rate and discharging rate of the
battery is important in avoiding early charging to the maximum
charge or full discharge below the minimum threshold. This
can be achieved by means of embedded charge controllers in
the battery pack.
 Also, the protocols at the data link layer and network layer can
be designed to make use of the discharge models. Monitoring
of the battery for voltage levels, remaining capacity, and
temperature so that proactive actions can be taken is required
 Processor Power Management
 The clock speed and the number of instructions
executed per unit time are some of the processor
parameters that affect power consumption.
 The CPU can be put into different power saving
modes during low processing load conditions. The
CPU power can be completely turned off if the
machine is idle for a long time.
 In such cases, interrupts can be used to turn on the
CPU upon detection of user interaction or other
events.
 Device Power Management
 Intelligent device management can reduce power consumption
of a mobile node significantly. This can be done by the
operating system (OS) by selectively powering down interface
devices that are not used or by putting devices into different
power saving modes, depending on their usage.

 Advanced power management features built into the operating

system and application software's for managing devices
effectively are required.
 Scalability
 A hierarchical topology-based system and addressing may be
more suitable for large ad hoc wireless networks.
 Hybrid architectures that combine the multi-hop radio
relaying in the presence of infrastructure may improve
scalability.
 While military, search and rescue operations do usually have
less number of nodes, commercial deployments have shown a
trend of installation of large number of nodes
 Deployment Considerations
 The deployment of ad hoc wireless networks involves actions
different from those of wired networks. Wired networks require
lots of planning
 The deployment of a commercial ad hoc wireless network has
the following benefits when compared to wired networks:

 Low cost of deployment

 Incremental Deployment
 Short Deployment time
 Reconfigurability
The following are the major issues to be considered in
deploying an ad hoc wireless network:
 Scenario of deployment: Deployment varies widely across
military deployments, search and rescue deployments,
commercial deployment and home network deployments

 Required Longevity of the network: The deployment of ad

hoc wireless networks should also consider the required
longevity of the network. If the network is required for a short
while battery-powered mobile nodes can be used. When the
connectivity is required for a longer duration of time, fixed
radio relaying equipment with regenerative power sources can
be deployed.
• Area of coverage
The area of coverage of an ad hoc wireless network is determined
by the nature of application for which the network is set up. The
mobile nodes' capabilities such as the transmission range and
associated hardware, software, and power source should match the
area of coverage required.
• Service Availability
The availability of network service is defined as the ability of an
ad hoc wireless network to provide service even with the failure of
certain nodes.
Redundant inactive radio relaying devices can be placed in such a
way that on the event of failure of an active relaying node, the
redundant relaying device can take over its responsibilities.
Operational Integrity with other infrastructure
 Operational integration of ad hoc wireless networks with other
infrastructures can be considered for improving the performance
or gathering additional information, or for providing better QoS

 The wireless mesh networks that service a given urban region

can interoperate with the wide-area cellular infrastructure in
order to provide better QoS and smooth handoffs across the
networks.

 Routing protocols assume the availability of the global

positioning system (GPS), which is a satellite-based
infrastructure by which the geographical location information
can be obtained as a resource for network synchronization and
geographical positioning
 Choice of Protocols
 The choice of protocols at different layers of the protocol stack is to
be done taking into consideration the deployment scenario
 In the network layer, the routing protocol has to be selected with care.
A routing protocol that uses geographical information (GPS
information) may not work well in situations where such information
is not available.
 An ad hoc wireless network with nodes that cannot have their power
sources replenished should use a routing protocol that does not
employ periodic beacons for routing. The periodic beacons, or routing
updates, drain the battery with time.
 At the transport layer, the connection-oriented or connectionless
protocol should be adapted to work in the environment in which the
ad hoc wireless network is deployed.
 packet loss arising out of congestion, channel error, link break, and
network partition is to be handled differently in different applications.
 The timer values at different layers of the protocol stack should be
ADHOC WIRELESS INTERNET
The major issues to be considered for a successful ad
hoc wireless Internet are the following:
• Gateways
Gateway nodes in the ad hoc wireless Internet are the
entry points to the wired Internet.
The major part of the service provisioning lies with the
gateway nodes. Generally owned and operated by a
service provider,
Gateways perform the following tasks:
 keeping track of the end users,
 bandwidth management, traffic shaping, packet
filtering,
 bandwidth fairness, address, service, and location
discovery
• Address mobility:
Similar to the Mobile IP, the ad hoc wireless Internet also faces the
challenge of address mobility. This problem is worse here as the nodes
operate over multiple wireless hops. Solutions such as Mobile IP can
provide temporary alternatives for this.
• Routing:
Routing is a major problem in the ad hoc wireless Internet, due to the
dynamic topological changes, the presence of gateways, multi-hop
relaying, and the hybrid character of the network. The possible solution
for this is the use of a separate routing protocol
• Transport layer protocol:
Even though several solutions for transport layer protocols exist for ad hoc
wireless networks, unlike other layers, the choice lies in favour of TCP's
extensions proposed for ad hoc wireless networks. Split approaches that
use traditional wired TCP for the wired part and a specialized transport
layer protocol for the ad hoc wireless network part can also be considered
where the gateways act as the intermediate nodes at which the connections
are split
• Load balancing:
It is likely that the ad hoc wireless Internet gateways experience heavy
traffic. Hence the gateways can be saturated much earlier than other
nodes in the network. Load balancing techniques are essential to
distribute the load so as to avoid the situation where the gateway nodes
become bottleneck nodes
• Pricing/billing:
Since Internet bandwidth is expensive, it becomes very important to
introduce pricing/billing strategies for the ad hoc wireless Internet.
Gateway is the preferred choice for charging the traffic to and from the
Internet
Much more complex case is pricing the local traffic (traffic within the
wireless part, that is, it originated and terminated within the wireless part
without passing through the gateway nodes), where it becomes necessary
to have a dedicated, secure, and lightweight pricing/billing infrastructure
installed at every node
Provisioning of security:
The inherent broadcast nature of the wireless medium attracts not just the
mobility seekers but also potential hackers who love to snoop on
important information sent unprotected over the air. Hence security is a
prime concern in the ad hoc wireless Internet. Since the end users can
utilize the ad hoc wireless Internet infrastructure to make e-commerce
transactions, it is important to include security mechanisms in the ad hoc
wireless Internet
QoS support:
With the widespread use of voice over IP (VoIP) and growing
multimedia applications over the Internet, provisioning of QoS support
in the ad hoc wireless Internet becomes a very important issue
Service, address, and location discovery:
Service discovery in any network refers to the activity of
discovering or identifying the party which provides a particular
service or resource.
In wired networks, service location protocols exist to do the
same, and similar systems need to be extended to operate in the ad
hoc wireless Internet as well.
Address discovery refers to the services such as those provided by
address resolution protocol (ARP) or domain name service (DNS)
operating within the wireless domain.
Location discovery refers to different activities such as detecting
the location of a particular mobile node in the network or
detecting the geographical location of nodes. Location discovery
services can provide enhanced services such as routing of packets,
location-based services, and selective region-wide broadcasts
THE END