Recent advances in electronics and wireless communications have enabled the development of low cost, low power, small scale, and multi-functional sensor nodes (called motes) that can communicate untethered in short distances. These motes can be connected together to form wireless sensor networks (WSNs). The constraints of motes make the design and operation of WSNs different than traditional wireless networks and require the development of resource-conscious protocols and management. This course aims at discussing the state-of-the-art in WSNs, including the architecture and protocols involving them and their (potential) application scenarios. Case studies of previous work as well as open areas of research will also be discussed. (Formerly 074.786)

Course Evaluation

Your final mark will be evaluated as follows (one assignment, one paper review, and the term test will be marked and returned before the voluntary withdrawal deadline (November 12, 2008):

    Paper reviews (6)		24%
    Assignments	(2-3)		30%
    Research project		26%
    Term Test			20% 

Academic Dishonesty

Plagiarism in the paper reviews and research project, assignments, or any form of cheating during the examination is subject to serious academic penalty. If you are not sure what constitutes academic dishonesty consult section 7 of the general calendar academic regulations. We now have specific Faculty of Science regulations that you must follow.

Topics

Please note that the following is tentative.

• Introduction and overview [2 weeks]
  • Overview of the course; overview of sensor network protocols, architecture, and applications; simulation and experimental platforms; main features of WSNs; research issues and trends.
• Enabling technologies [2 weeks]
  • Fundamentals of 802.15.4, Bluetooth, and UWB; Physical and MAC layers.
• Sensor node hardware and software [2 weeks]
  • Hardware: mica2, micaZ, telosB, cricket, Imote2, tmote, btnode, and Sun SPOT.
  • Software (OS): tinyOS, MANTIS, Contiki, and RetOS.
  • Programming tools: C, nesC, Mate
• Localization, connectivity, and topology [2 weeks]
  • Sensor deployment mechanisms; coverage issues; node discovery protocols.
• Network layer protocols [2 weeks]
  • Data dissemination and processing; multi-hop and cluster based protocols; routing.
• Middleware and application layers [2 weeks]
  • Data dissemination; data storage; query processing; sensorWeb; sensorGrid.
• Open issues for future research [1 week]
  • Energy preservation and efficiency; security challenges; fault-tolerance; ...

Textbook and References

• Books
  • Protocols and Architectures for Wireless Sensor Networks. H. Karl and A. Willig. John Wiley & Sons, June 2005.
  • Wireless Sensor Networks: Technology, Protocols, and Applications. K. Sohraby, D. Minoli, and T. Znati. John Wiley & Sons, March 2007.
  • Wireless Sensor Networks. C. S. Raghavendra, K. M. Sivalingam, and T. Znati, Editors. Springer Verlag, Sep. 2006.
  • Wireless Sensor Networks: Architectures and Protocols. E. H. Callaway, Jr. AUERBACH, Aug. 2003.
  • Networking Wireless Sensors. B. Krishnamachari. Cambridge University Press, Dec. 2005.
  • Wireless Sensor Networks: An Information Processing Approach. F. Zhao and L. Guibas. Morgan Kaufmann, Jul. 2004.
  • Sensor Networks and Configuration: Fundamentals, Standards, Platforms, and Applications. N. P. Mahalik. Springer Verlag, Nov. 2006.
  • Wireless Sensor Networks: A Systems Perspective, N. Bulusu and S. Jha, Editors, Artech House, August 2005.
• Journals and Conferences (too many to list them all, but here are a few)
  • ACM Transactions on Sensor Networks (TOSN)
  • International Conference on Information Processing in Sensor Networks (IPSN)
  • European Conference on Wireless Sensor Networks (EWSN)
  • ACM Conference on Embedded Networked Sensor Systems (SenSys)
  • International Conference on Sensor Technologies and Applications (SENSORCOMM)
  • International Conference on Intelligent Sensors, Sensor Networks and Information Processing (ISSNIP)
• A random subset of papers (a extensive list will be available later)
  • I. F. Akyildiz, W. Su, Y. Sankarasubramaniam, and E. Cayirci. A Survey on Sensor Networks, IEEE Communications Magazine, August 2002.
  • P. Levis, N. Lee, M. Welsh, and D. Culler. TOSSIM: Accurate and Scalable Simulation of Entire TinyOS Applications, The First ACM Conference on Embedded Networked Sensor Systems (Sensys03), November 2003.
  • S. Tilak, N. B. Abu-Ghazaleh, and W. Heinzelman. A Taxonomy of Wireless Micro-Sensor Network Models, ACM Mobile Computing and Communications Review (MC2R), April 2002.
  • A. Sinha and A. Chandrakasan. Dynamic Power Management in Wireless Sensor Networks, IEEE Design & Test of Computers, March-April 2001.
  • D. Estrin, L. Girod, G. Pottie, and M. Srivastava. Instrumenting the World with Wireless Sensor Networks, International Conference on Acoustics, Speech, and Signal Processing (ICASSP 2001), May 2001.
  • W. R. Heinzelman, J. Kulik and H. Balakrishnan. Adaptive Protocols for Information Dissemination in Wireless Sensor Networks, The Fifth Annual ACM/IEEE International Conference on Mobile Computing and Networking, August 1999.
  • C. Intanagonwiwat, R. Govindan and D. Estrin. Directed Diffusion: A Scalable and Robust Communication paradigm for Sensor Networks, The Sixth Annual ACM/IEEE International Conference on Mobile Computing and Networking, August 2000.

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