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Next Generation Communication Technologies for Sensor and Ad-Hoc Networks

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A special issue of Sensors (ISSN 1424-8220). This special issue belongs to the section "Sensor Networks".

Deadline for manuscript submissions: closed (15 October 2019) | Viewed by 19857

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Dr. Andrea Abrardo

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Guest Editor

Information Engineering and Mathematical Sciences, University of Siena, Rettorato, via Banchi di Sotto 55, 53100 Siena, Italy
Interests: Radio Resource Management for 5G Communications; Wireless Networks Virtualization; Wireless Sensor Networks; MIMO Communications; Cognitive Radio

Dr. Alessandro Pozzebon

E-Mail Website
Guest Editor

Information Engineering and Mathematical Sciences, University of Siena, Rettorato, via Banchi di Sotto 55, 53100 Siena, Italy
Interests: Internet of Things, Wireless Sensor Networks, Smart Cities, LPWA Networks, Environmental Monitoring
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Special Issue Information

Dear Colleagues,

The wide diffusion of Wireless Sensor Networks (WSN) as technological solutions for the deployment of pervasive monitoring infrastructures has led to a rapid growth in the number of available communication technologies. In this context, a crucial role is traditionally assigned to emerging Low Power Wide Area Networks (LPWAN) solutions in the unlicensed spectrum. However, with the introduction of new licensed spectrum LTE technologies, novel architectures are emerging for Machine-to-Machine (M2M) and Device-to-Device (D2D) communications, allowing for new opportunities such as improved security, quality of service, and spectral efficiency, as well as increased nodes’ density, energy efficiency, and service differentiation. At the same time, upcoming 5G networks are particularly underlined to enrich future cellular M2M communications with increased throughput, reduced end-to-end (E2E) delay, wide coverage, increased battery operating time, and support for an enormous number of devices per cell.

This technological evolution will back up the already existing trend towards the diffusion of new applications and deployment scenarios, with ad hoc and sensor networks designed and developed for the most disparate contexts, ranging from healthcare to environmental monitoring, industrial environments, and the vast scenarios of Smart Cities. Each of these contexts requires ad hoc architectures and solutions whose features change in parallel with advances in the technologies.

This Special Issue invites original contributions on the topics related to next-generation communication technologies for sensor and ad hoc networks, including, but not limited to, the following topics:

The integration of different communication technologies for wireless sensor and ad hoc networks;
New wireless sensor and ad hoc network application scenarios;
LPWAN and LTE technologies for sensor and ad hoc networks to move into the new 4.0 paradigm;
Highly dense sensor and ad hoc networks;
Energy efficiency in next-generation sensor and ad hoc networks;
Novel energy harvesting solutions for sensor and ad hoc networks;
Security issues in next-generation sensor and ad hoc networks;
Future trends in M2M communications—specifically, the 5G revolution;
5G experimentations and trials on M2M communications.

Dr. Andrea Abrardo
Dr. Alessandro Pozzebon
Guest Editors

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Please visit the Instructions for Authors page before submitting a manuscript. The Article Processing Charge (APC) for publication in this open access journal is 2600 CHF (Swiss Francs). Submitted papers should be well formatted and use good English. Authors may use MDPI's English editing service prior to publication or during author revisions.

Published Papers (6 papers)

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Research

17 pages, 814 KiB

Open AccessArticle

An Opportunistic Cooperative Packet Transmission Scheme in Wireless Multi-Hop Networks

by Yating Gao, Guixia Kang and Jianming Cheng

Sensors 2019, 19(21), 4821; https://doi.org/10.3390/s19214821 - 05 Nov 2019

Cited by 4 | Viewed by 2262

Abstract

Cooperative routing, combining cooperative communication in the physical layer and routing technology in the network layer, is one of the most widely used technologies for improving end-to-end transmission reliability and delay in the wireless multi-hop networks. However, the existing cooperative routing schemes are designed based on an optimal fixed-path routing so that the end-to-end performance is greatly restricted by the low spatial efficiency. To address this problem, in this paper an opportunistic cooperative packet transmission (OCPT) scheme is explored by combining cooperative communication and opportunistic routing. The proposed scheme divides the multi-hop route into multiple virtual multiple-input-multiple-output (MIMO) transmissions. Before each transmission, based on the idea of opportunistic routing, a cluster head (CH) is introduced to determine the multiple transmitters and multiple receivers to form a cluster. Then, the single-hop transmission distance is defined as the metric of forward progress to the destination. Each intra-cluster cooperative packet transmission is formulated as a transmit beamforming optimization problem, and an iterative optimal beamforming policy is proposed to solve the problem and maximize the single-hop transmission distance. CH organizes multiple transmitters to cooperatively transmit packets to multiple receivers with the optimized transmit beamforming vector. Finally, according to the transmission results, the cluster is updated and the new cooperative transmission is started. Iteratively, the transmission lasts until the destination has successfully received the packet. We comprehensively evaluate the OCPT scheme by comparing it with conventional routing schemes. The simulation results demonstrate that the proposed OCPT scheme is effective on shortening the end-to-end transmission delay, increasing the number of successful packet transmissions and improving the packet arrival ratio and transmission efficiency. Full article

(This article belongs to the Special Issue Next Generation Communication Technologies for Sensor and Ad-Hoc Networks)

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20 pages, 845 KiB

Open AccessArticle

Opportunistic Multipath Routing in Long-Hop Wireless Sensor Networks

by Sangdae Kim, Beom-Su Kim, Kyong Hoon Kim and Ki-Il Kim

Sensors 2019, 19(19), 4072; https://doi.org/10.3390/s19194072 - 20 Sep 2019

Cited by 8 | Viewed by 2785

Abstract

To improve the packet delivery ratio in wireless sensor networks, many approaches such as multipath, opportunistic, and learning-based routing protocols have been proposed. However, the performance of the existing protocols are degraded under long-hop wireless sensor networks because the additional overhead is proportional to the number of hops. To deal with the overhead, we propose an opportunistic multipath routing that forecasts the required number of paths, as well as bifurcation based on opportunistic routing according to the reliability requirement. In the proposed scheme, an intermediate node is able to select a different node for each transmission and to handle path failure adaptively. Through a performance evaluation, we demonstrate that the proposed scheme achieves a higher packet delivery ratio and reduces the energy consumption by at least approximately 33% and up to approximately 65% compared with existing routing protocols, under the condition of an 80% link success ratio in the long-hop sensor network. Full article

(This article belongs to the Special Issue Next Generation Communication Technologies for Sensor and Ad-Hoc Networks)

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32 pages, 6110 KiB

Open AccessArticle

Energy-Efficient Multi-Disjoint Path Opportunistic Node Connection Routing Protocol in Wireless Sensor Networks for Smart Grids

by Junaid Anees, Hao-Chun Zhang, Sobia Baig and Bachirou Guene Lougou

Sensors 2019, 19(17), 3789; https://doi.org/10.3390/s19173789 - 01 Sep 2019

Cited by 7 | Viewed by 3789

Abstract

The gradual increase in the maturity of sensor electronics has resulted in the increasing demand for wireless sensor networks for many industrial applications. One of the industrial platforms for efficient usage and deployment of sensor networks is smart grids. The critical network traffic in smart grids includes both delay-sensitive and delay-tolerant data for real-time and non-real-time usage. To facilitate these traffic requirements, the asynchronous working–sleeping cycle of sensor nodes can be used as an opportunity to create a node connection. Efficient use of wireless sensor network in smart grids depends on various parameters like working–sleeping cycle, energy consumption, network lifetime, routing protocol, and delay constraints. In this paper, we propose an energy-efficient multi-disjoint path opportunistic node connection routing protocol (abbreviated as EMOR) for sensor nodes deployed in neighborhood area network. EMOR utilizes residual energy, availability of sensor node’s buffer size, working–sleeping cycle of the sensor node and link quality factor to calculate optimum path connectivity after opportunistic connection random graph and spanning tree formation. The multi-disjoint path selection in EMOR based on service differentiation of real-time and non-real-time traffic leads to an improvement in packet delivery rate, network lifetime, end-end delay and total energy consumption. Full article

(This article belongs to the Special Issue Next Generation Communication Technologies for Sensor and Ad-Hoc Networks)

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25 pages, 2736 KiB

Open AccessFeature PaperArticle

On the Evaluation of the NB-IoT Random Access Procedure in Monitoring Infrastructures

by Sergio Martiradonna, Giuseppe Piro and Gennaro Boggia

Sensors 2019, 19(14), 3237; https://doi.org/10.3390/s19143237 - 23 Jul 2019

Cited by 26 | Viewed by 4580

Abstract

NarrowBand IoT (NB-IoT) is emerging as a promising communication technology offering a reliable wireless connection to a large number of devices employed in pervasive monitoring scenarios, such as Smart City, Precision Agriculture, and Industry 4.0. Since most of the NB-IoT transmissions occur in the uplink, the random access channel (that is the primary interface between devices and the base station) may usually become the main bottleneck of the entire system. For this reason, analytical models and simulation tools able to investigate its behavior in different scenarios are of the utmost importance for driving current and future research activities. Unfortunately, scientific literature partially addresses the current open issues by means of simplified and, in many cases, not standard-compliant approaches. To provide a significant step forward in this direction, the contribution of this paper is three-folded. First, it presents a flexible, open-source, and 3GPP-compliant implementation of the NB-IoT random access procedure. Second, it formulates an analytical model capturing both collision and success probabilities associated with the aforementioned procedure. Third, it presents the cross-validation of both the analytical model and the simulation tool, by taking into account reference applications scenarios of sensor networks enabling periodic reporting in monitoring infrastructures. Obtained results prove the remarkable accuracy, demonstrating a well-calibrated instrument, which will be also useful for future research activities. Full article

(This article belongs to the Special Issue Next Generation Communication Technologies for Sensor and Ad-Hoc Networks)

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26 pages, 1640 KiB

Open AccessArticle

FSF: Applying Machine Learning Techniques to Data Forwarding in Socially Selfish Opportunistic Networks

by Camilo Souza, Edjair Mota, Diogo Soares, Pietro Manzoni, Juan-Carlos Cano, Carlos T. Calafate and Enrique Hernández-Orallo

Sensors 2019, 19(10), 2374; https://doi.org/10.3390/s19102374 - 23 May 2019

Cited by 8 | Viewed by 3057

Abstract

Opportunistic networks are becoming a solution to provide communication support in areas with overloaded cellular networks, and in scenarios where a fixed infrastructure is not available, as in remote and developing regions. A critical issue, which still requires a satisfactory solution, is the design of an efficient data delivery solution trading off delivery efficiency, delay, and cost. To tackle this problem, most researchers have used either the network state or node mobility as a forwarding criterion. Solutions based on social behaviour have recently been considered as a promising alternative. Following the philosophy from this new category of protocols, in this work, we present our “FriendShip and Acquaintanceship Forwarding” (FSF) protocol, a routing protocol that makes its routing decisions considering the social ties between the nodes and both the selfishness and the device resources levels of the candidate node for message relaying. When a contact opportunity arises, FSF first classifies the social ties between the message destination and the candidate to relay. Then, by using logistic functions, FSF assesses the relay node selfishness to consider those cases in which the relay node is socially selfish. To consider those cases in which the relay node does not accept receipt of the message because its device has resource constraints at that moment, FSF looks at the resource levels of the relay node. By using the ONE simulator to carry out trace-driven simulation experiments, we find that, when accounting for selfishness on routing decisions, our FSF algorithm outperforms previously proposed schemes, by increasing the delivery ratio up to 20%, with the additional advantage of introducing a lower number of forwarding events. We also find that the chosen buffer management algorithm can become a critical element to improve network performance in scenarios with selfish nodes. Full article

(This article belongs to the Special Issue Next Generation Communication Technologies for Sensor and Ad-Hoc Networks)

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22 pages, 807 KiB

Open AccessArticle

A Constrained Coding-Aware Routing Scheme in Wireless Ad-Hoc Networks

by Yimin Zhao, Song Xiao, Hongping Gan, Lizhao Li and Lina Xiao

Sensors 2019, 19(10), 2252; https://doi.org/10.3390/s19102252 - 15 May 2019

Cited by 5 | Viewed by 2675

Abstract

In wireless multi-hop networks, instead of using the traditional store-and-forward method, the relay nodes can exploit the network coding idea to encode and transmit the packets in the distributed coding-aware routing (DCAR) mechanisms, which can decrease the transmission number and achieve higher throughput. However, depending on the primary coding conditions of DCAR, the DCAR-type schemes may not only detect more coding opportunities, but also lead to an imbalanced distribution of the network load. Especially, they are not energy efficient in more complex scenarios, such as wireless ad-hoc networks. In this paper, to solve these shortcomings, we propose a constrained coding-aware routing (CCAR) mechanism with the following benefits: (1) by the constrained coding conditions, the proposed mechanism can detect good coding opportunities and assure a higher decoding probability; (2) we propose a tailored “routing + coding” discovery process, which is more lightweight and suitable for the CCAR scheme; and (3) by evaluating the length of the output queue, we can estimate the states of coding nodes to improve the efficient coding benefit. To those ends, we implement the CCAR scheme in different topologies with the ns-2 simulation tool. The simulation results show that a higher effective coding benefit ratio can be achieved by the constrained coding conditions and new coding benefit function. Moreover, the CCAR scheme has significant advantages regarding throughput, average end-to-end delay, and energy consumption. Full article

(This article belongs to the Special Issue Next Generation Communication Technologies for Sensor and Ad-Hoc Networks)

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