Wireless communication protocol architectures for nanosensor networks

Abstract

Recent developments in micro fabrication and nanotechnology will enable the inexpensive manufacturing of massive numbers of tiny computing elements with sensors. New programming paradigms are required to obtain organized and coherent behavior from the cooperation of large numbers of sensor nodes. The individual nodes are identical, randomly placed and unreliable. They communicate with a small local neighborhood via wireless broadcast. In such environments, where individual nodes have limited resources, aggregating the node into groups is useful for specialization, increased robustness, and efficient resource allocation. In this paper, an application-specific self-organization protocol stack is developed. The clustering process is divided into phases. The first phase is to know the neighbor nodes. The second phase is to set up the cluster and routing. A 'find maximum clique algorithm' is used to set up clusters. A back off method is used to set up the hop field and routing. Group leaders set up a TDMA schedule for steady state operation. This schedule ensures that there is no conflict among in the same cluster and between clusters. Direct-sequence spread spectrum (DS-SS) is used to avoid inter-group conflict. The limited power resource is a challenge in nanosensor networks. This paper uses two different ways to analyze energy consumed in nanosensor networks, energy cost field and bit flow method. Sensor node deployment, cluster size, and propagation condition effect are discussed in this paper by those two methods respectively.