Clustering in Wireless Sensor Networks

Applications of Wireless Sensor Networks (WSN) have been expanded from industrial operation to daily common use. With the pace of development, a good number of state-of-the-art routing protocols have been proposed for WSN. Among many of these protocols, hierarchical or cluster-based protocol technique is adopted from the wired network because of its scalability, better manageability, and implicit energy efficiency. In this chapter, the authors have surveyed Low Energy Adaptive Clustering Hierarchy, Power-Efficient Gathering in Sensor Information Systems, Adaptive Periodic Threshold-Sensitive Energy Efficient Sensor Network, and Hybrid Energy-Efficient Distributed Routing Protocols. These protocols exhibit notable characteristics and advantages compared to their contemporaries. Again, context aware computing and applications have been greatly emphasized in recent articles by renowned technologists. This approach is considered as a momentous technology that will change the way of interaction with information devices. Accordingly, context aware clustering technique carries a great deal of importance among WSN routing protocols. Therefore, the authors have investigated noteworthy context aware routing protocols such as: Context Adaptive Clustering, Data-Aware Clustering Hierarchy, Context-Aware Clustering Hierarchy, and Context-Aware Multilayer Hierarchical Protocol. Their investigation and analysis of these protocols has been included in this chapter with useful remarks. Context awareness is considered an integral part of Body Sensor Networks (BSN), which is one kind of WSN. Thus, the authors have also discussed issues related to context aware techniques used in BSN.

Energy-Efficient MAC Protocols in Distributed Sensor Networks

As an enabling network technology, energy efficient Medium Access Control (MAC) protocol plays a vital role in a battery-powered distributed sensor network. MAC protocols control how sensor nodes access a shared radio channel to communicate with each other. This chapter discusses the key elements of MAC design with an emphasis on energy efficiency. Furthermore, it reviews several typical MAC protocols proposed in the literature, comparing their energy conservation mechanism. Particularly, it presents a Collaborative Compression Based MAC (CCP-MAC) protocol, which takes advantage of the overheard data to achieve energy savings. Finally, it compares the performance of CCP-MAC with related MAC protocols, illustrating their advantages and disadvantages.

A Review of Privacy, Internet Security Threat, and Legislation in Africa

This chapter serves as a collection of works that were done in the area of cybersecurity in Africa—with a focus on four countries representing the cardinal points in Africa: Kenya, Nigeria, Egypt, and South Africa. It presents detailed information on the legislative framework proposed and implemented by these countries to combat and control cybercrimes. Notable among them are the Egypt’s e-Signature Law 15, Kenya’s e-Transaction Bill, Nigeria’s Computer Security and Critical Information Infrastructure Protection Bill, and South Africa’s Electronic Communications and Transaction Act. Equally, these legislative measures were commended, criticized, and factors that militate their implementation are discussed. The ultimate realization is that cybercrime can never be abolished; rather, every effort aims at combating and controlling it in some way. Finally, the chapter posits areas that the African nations can improve in their quest for making cyberspace safer.

A Security Framework for Networked RFID

In the last decade RFID technology has become a major contender for managing large scale logistics operations and generating and distributing the massive amount of data involved in such operations. One of the main obstacles to the widespread deployment and adoption of RFID systems is the security issues inherent in them. This is compounded by a noticeable lack of literature on how to identify the vulnerabilities of a RFID system and then effectively identify and develop counter measures to combat the threats posed by those vulnerabilities. In this chapter, the authors develop a conceptual framework for analysing the threats, attacks, and security requirements pertaining to networked RFID systems. The vulnerabilities of, and the threats to, the system are identified using the threat model. The security framework itself consists of two main concepts: (1) the attack model, which identifies and classifies the possible attacks, and (2) the system model, which identifies the security requirements. The framework gives readers a method with which to analyse the threats any given system faces. Those threats can then be used to identify the attacks possible on that system and get a better understanding of those attacks. It also allows the reader to easily identify all the security requirements of that system and identify how those requirements can be met.

A Walk through Sensor Network Programming Models

The widespread use of sensor networks in a range of applications has given rise to various programming approaches. It is a long standing concept that the application programmer of a sensor network should be shielded, as much as possible, from the questions of communications and systems architecture, that is, the low level details. In this chapter, the authors survey existing programming models for sensor networks and classify them by following a layered approach, based on their level of abstractions. With their approach they endeavor to lay out a clear guideline to choose the right approach for programming sensor networks for application development, thus potentially alleviating the heavy burden for programmers.

An Approach to Faulty Reader Detection in RFID Reader Network

Radio Frequency Identification (RFID) technology is becoming increasingly popular as an automated tool for object monitoring and identification in a cost-efficient manner. RFID systems are made up of heterogeneous components consisting of both hardware and software. RFID components such as the readers are prone to failures with serious consequences to the overall system. Thus, issues such as reliability and dependability of RFID systems are receiving attention recently. This mandates fault management that includes monitoring the health of RFID readers and accessing the RFID reader configurations remotely. Therefore, an approach that detects the faulty readers with the aim to minimize the impacts of the faulty readers on the system reliability and dependability is of paramount importance. In this chapter, the authors discuss an approach to detect faulty readers in networked RFID system environments. Performance evaluation of the approach against other techniques is presented and shows that it performs reasonably well in the presence of faulty readers.

Enhancement of e-Learning Systems and Methodologies through Advancements in Distributed Computing Technologies

The evolution of the Internet, distributed architectures, and Grid-oriented frameworks can change the way people acquire and disseminate both knowledge and experience, thus the way they learn. Therefore, one can envisage new e-learning models, based on a more efficient users’ interaction, that also empowers the hands-on experience. This will improve learning outcomes, while reducing the need of physical devices and removing the inherent boundaries. Moreover, this reduces costs by promoting the sharing of resources and learning assets. From this perspective, the chapter discusses the integration of classical e-learning paradigms with new advancements of distributed computing, such as: 1) the usage of Peer-to-Peer (P2P) to produce network-independent overlays, also by enabling direct student-to-student exchanges; 2) the integration, through grid-based middleware, of real or virtual devices, plants and Sensors Network (SN) within the e-learning environment; and 3) the adoption of a distributed e-learning system to spread culture through mobile devices, with an emphasis on satellite communications.

Low Loss Energy-Aware Routing Protocol for Data Gathering Applications in Wireless Sensor Network

But, as the energy-efficiency is critical for periodical data gathering applications in wireless sensor networks, it has the highest priority in algorithms design; also the latency, packet loss, and throughput are important factors and should be addressed. This chapter proposes a routing protocol inspired by an energy-efficient cluster-based routing protocol called Energy-Aware Routing Protocol (EAP). The new enhanced protocol that is called Low Loss Energy-Aware Routing Protocol (LLEAP) enhances the performance of EAP in terms of some quality of service parameters by adding a second iteration for constructing the tree structure for multi-hop communication among cluster heads, by modifying the used weights of the cluster heads and parent node selection, and finally by selecting suitable aggregation method to decrease losses and delay. Simulation results showed that LLEAP significantly outperforms EAP in terms of packet loss percentage by on average 93.4%.

A Comparative Analysis of Hierarchical Routing Protocols in Wireless Sensor Networks

Wireless Sensor Networks (WSNs) consist of small nodes with sensing, computation, and wireless communications capabilities. Many routing, power management, and data dissemination protocols have been specifically designed for WSNs. Routing protocols in WSNs might differ depending on the application and network architecture. However, wireless sensor networks have several restrictions, e.g. limited energy supply, limited computing power, and limited bandwidth, and hence, one of the main design goals of WSNs is to carry out data communication while trying to prolong the lifetime of the network and prevent connectivity degradation by employing efficient energy management techniques. This chapter will give a detailed description of the characteristics of routing in wireless sensor networks; it describes the routing protocols used in these networks pointing out the advantages and disadvantages of each.

Wireless Sensor Network Security Attacks

Wireless Sensor Networks (WSNs) are a rapidly growing area for research and commercial development. Originally used in military applications, their commercialization offers potential low cost solutions for real-world monitoring and process control. Since they may be deployed in hostile, unattended, environments and may collect sensitive data, they may be prone to attack by entities that wish to interfere with their operation and/or usurp or alter the information they collect. While their low cost enhances their desirability as a monitoring solution, it also presents inherent resource and computing constraints. These constraints are major obstacles for the implementation of traditional security paradigms. Consequently, one of the most active areas of research in Wireless Sensor Networks is security. This chapter takes a representative survey of the types of security attacks WSNs may be subjected to. Additionally, steps that may be taken to mitigate these attacks are also discussed. Intrusion Detection Systems, a paradigm for monitoring network activities for malicious behavior, are introduced, and specific examples of them are discussed.