TDMA BASED SENSOR NETWORK FOR MILITARY APPLICATIONS

SHIVANANDA N T
Assoc. Professor, Dept. of ECE, DBIT, Bangalore-74

ABSTRACTWireless sensor networks (WSN) is a new network in next generation family that
enables to creates many application areas like medical, agricultural , process control ,smart
homes etc. In this paper, a TDMA based sensor network for military applications (MIL-APS) is
proposed. MIL-APS is developed to operate in large areas for acceptable lifetime periods. In order
to realize MIL-APS, distributed time scheduling mechanism, topology construction algorithm
and rescheduling algorithm is proposed. Simulation results have shown that MIL-APS can
operate in large areas, in acceptable lifetime and delay constraints.

INDEX TERMSsensor networks, TDMA, military Applications.

INTRODUCTION

With the development of MEME Technology, it has been possible to integrate battery-operated
sensor, computing power and low power wireless communication components into one small size
device. A sensor node collects data from the environment continuously. Thousands of these nodes
can be used to collect process and send the data about the environment. The network that is
composed of these wireless sensors is called wireless sensor network (WSN). WSN are used in
variety of applications like Environmental monitoring, condition based maintenance, smart
spaces, military, precision agriculture, transportation, inventory tracking are just some of the
sample application areas . One of the most common application areas of sensor networks is
military.

PRELIMINARY WORK

TDMA is a technique to share the medium among multiple users. Time frames are divided into
time slots and each slot is assigned to a user. In this way, when a user wants to access to the
medium, it uses the medium in its own slot. TDMA has many advantages for sensor networks.
With the help of TDMA, node can know exactly when it should use its radio circuit and sensor
node can turn off its radio circuit to save more power. Node uses transmitter or receiver only
when it is needed. This is why TDMA is very attractive for sensor network applications. There
are some sensor network systems based on TDMA, such as LEACH, SMACS, PACT, two-tiered
building monitoring system.LEACH is a self-organizing, adaptive clustering protocol that uses

MIL-APS SYSTEM MECHANISMS

Overview
MIL-APS is proposed to monitor a relatively large area against intruders and send the data about
intruders to sink as soon as possible. The main design considerations of MIL-APS are to be able
to operate in large areas, to minimize power consumption, to reduce delay.
In order to satisfy design considerations, MIL-APS is designed as a TDMA based multihop
sensor network. The sink of MIL-APS is supposed to have a high range transmitter so that every
node can receive its broadcast signal.
MIL-APS includes global time synchronization, distributed time slot assignment, topology
construction mechanisms. In addition to these basic mechanisms, there are data slot indication
mechanism to save more power and rescheduling mechanism to reduce delay. Before introducing
the mechanisms of MIL-APS, a sample application and basic assumptions of MIL-APS is
presented.

Sample Application and Basic Assumptions

The potential applications of wireless sensor networks are highly varied. Environmental
monitoring, condition based maintenance, smart spaces, military, precision agriculture,
transportation, factory instrumentation, inventory tracking are just some of the sample
application areas. Behaviors of one specific sensor node can be totally different from the others
even under the same conditions. In this case, it is clear that protocols that are developed for a
WSN may not be optimal for another WSN [3]. Sensor network systems should be application
specific [4]. A sample application scenario can help to understand the assumptions and
mechanisms of MIL-APS.

Basic Mechanisms
There are some basic mechanisms for operating MIL-APS properly. These are time
synchronization, distributed time scheduling and topology construction mechanisms.

Time Synchronization
According to assumption of this sensor network, every node in the system can receive the signals
the sink. Sink transmits a broadcast signal to sensor nodes at the beginning of each time frame.
These broadcast signals synchronize the network. This time synchronization scheme is very
similar to LEACH, however there are a few differences based on the differences of system
assumptions of MIL-APS and LEACH. The number of cluster in LEACH is a piori in the system.
Each cluster head synchronizes its own cluster. MIL-APS has only one cluster and the head of
cluster is the sink. Only the sink synchronizes the whole sensor nodes with its broadcast signal.

Distributed Time Scheduling Mechanism (DTSM)

Almost all sensor network architectures that use TDMA produce its time schedule centrally.
Cluster head collects the data about its sensor nodes and produces the time schedule of its cluster.
Time schedule is sent to nodes by the cluster head. The main assumption of this system is that
when cluster head transmits a signal, sensor nodes can receive or vice versa.

However, in MIL-APS, although the signal of the sink can be received by all sensor nodes, the
sink can not receive the signals of all sensor nodes. In this case, sensor nodes can not send their
join request signal. If distributed time scheduling algorithm is used, there is no need to send a
signal from sensor node to the sink directly.

Topology Construction
After distributed time scheduling, the second step for the proposed sensor network is topology
construction. Many TDMA based sensor network systems use star topology. All the nodes are

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directly connected to cluster head. However, in large areas, multi hop structure consumes less
power than one hop. There is a trade off between multihop and one hop structures. If the distance
is less than 30 meters, direct transmission is more efficient than multihop transmission. However
if it is longer than 30 meters multihop strategy can save energy [11].

If sensor network is aimed to cover a large area, average distance between sensor nodes and the
sink is supposed to be much longer than 30m. In this case, multi hop strategy is an essential part
of MIL-APS architecture.

A distributed topology construction algorithm is proposed to support multi hop strategy. Time
scheduling algorithm is also distributed. In this way, the only scalability constraint of the system
is the transmission range of the sink.

Figure 1 shows a sample run of the distributed topology construction algorithm. Suppose that A
has caught an advertisement from X with hop number h. It advertises its own advertisement
signal with the parameters X and h+1. B catches this signal and other advertisement signals, if
any. If A is the closest node among the nodes that have sent advertisement signal, B sends its
advertisement signal with parameters A and h+2.

If maximum hop number of the network is H, constructing the topology takes H+1 time frame for
the whole network. It is fast, simple and scalable. It consumes low power and it results in
minimum hop paths, which is a good approximation for minimum power consumption.

A receives adv(Y,h) from X

A sends adv(X,h+1)
B receives adv(X,h+1)

A receives adv(A,h+2) and

understands that B is its child. B sends adv(A,h+2) and
advertises that A is its
predecessor.

Fig. 1. A sample runs of topology construction algorithm

Rescheduling
Although power consumption is generally the most important design issue in sensor networks,
there are some other design considerations like delay. In some applications, delay between time of
event and time of data arrival to the sink is not crucial. However, if sensor network is designed
for military purposes, delay can be very important. In a military applicationssystem, the existence
of intruder should be reported as soon as possible.

If sensor node is h hop away from sink, and one time frame is t seconds, the worst delay is t*h
and t*h delay can not be acceptable in some cases. Suppose that t is one second and sensor node
that has sensed the arrival of intruder is 7 hops away. If the average distance between neighbor
nodes is 20 m., intruder is 140-150 m. away to the sink and the sink can know the existence of
intruder after 7 seconds which can be enough for the intruder to harm the soldier that holds the

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sink.

In order to assign proper time slots, node must know its hop distance to the sink. In this case,
rescheduling algorithm can not be run before distributed time scheduling algorithm.
Rescheduling should be placed between DTSM and topology construction.

After running distributed time scheduling algorithm, non sleeping nodes has valid time slot.
Nodes listen to its neighbors to receive an advertisement signal which includes the hop number
and node number of the sender. When a node receives a hop advertisement signal, rescheduling
is started. The advertisement signal includes the hop number of the sender. In this way, the
receiver of the advertisement signal can calculate its hop number. In addition to this, node can
get the number of sub time frames m from the sinks synchronization signal. The node can
calculate the sub frame number with the formula (m-((h-1) mod m)). It selects a random time slot
in the (m-((h-1) mod m))th sub time frame and sends a broadcast signal that includes the
information about the selected time slot. The node sends this information in its original time slot
that was assigned with DTSM mechanism. All the neighbors of the node listen to its signal and
check whether there is collision about its new slot number or not. If there is a collision, the nodes
that catch the problem send a signal in their own time slots. The node that tries to reschedule
listens to its all neighbors in the next time frame. If it gets a signal from the others, it sleeps. If it
does not get any signal related with its new time slot, it means there is no problem and it starts to
use its new slot and continues
with topology construction procedure. Figure 3 shows the signal handshaking required for
rescheduling. The figure starts with the node that has got a slot with DTSM mechanism.
An example helps to understand rescheduling clearer. Let us assume that the nodes in Figure 4
are one hop away from its consecutives. In this particular network, time frame has 300 time slots.
The first slot is reserved for time synchronization broadcast of the sink. Let us assume that
DTS_SN algorithm has been run and the assigned time slots are as in the Figure 4(a).

20000
Normal
15000 500
Delay (ms)

10000
5000
0
1 2 3 4 5 6 7 8
Fig. 2. Delay for different regions for different number of slots.

Performance Results
It is very difficult to analytically model the interactions of sensor nodes, even for the limited
number of nodes. In order to investigate performance results of MIL-APS, simulation method is
used. Although there are some network simulators that can simulate wireless networks, there is
no built-in sensor network module. In this paper, a new simulator has developed to simulate
MIL-APS. Simulation parameters are listed in Table1. Energy consumption model is the same as
in [9]. Energy of a node is assumed to be supplied with 15 mg. Ni-Cd battery which can support 2

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J [12].
Performance results are discussed in three domains. These are performance of DTSM, network
lifetime and delay.

Performance of DTSM
DTSM is a distributed time scheduling mechanism to assign proper time slots to sensor nodes.
However, DTSM can not assign time slots for every nodes. The nodes that can not get time slot
sleep and do not join into network. The ratio of sleeping nodes is an indicator of performance of
DTSM. MIL-APS is simulated for 1000 slotted time frames. 1000 slotted MIL-APS is
investigated for non-rescheduled, rescheduled with 5 sub-slotted, 10 sub-slotted and 20 sub-
slotted versions.

Figure 5 shows percentage of sleeping nodes for different number of nodes and different number
of slots. Percentage of sleeping nodes increases linearly with the increasing of number of nodes
and slots. The increasing rate is higher for MIL-APS with 500 time slot. Sleeping node rate is
acceptable for 1000 and 1500 time slots. However, sleeping node rate is high for 500 time slots.

The same cases are investigated with non-rescheduled 1000 time slots, resheduled with 5 sub-
slots, 10 sub-slots and 20 sub-slots. The results are presented in Figure 6.

12
% of sleeping nodes

10
8 50
0
6 10
4 00
2
0
2 2.5 3 3.5 4 4.5 5
Number of nodes (x1000)

Fig. 3. Sleeping node ratio for different number of nodes.

Figure 6 shows that rescheduling increases sleeping node ratio linearly.

Network Lifetime
Network lifetime is one of the most common performance metrics of sensor networks. However,
network lifetime definitions vary. In this paper, network lifetime is the time that the first sensor
node exhausts its energy. Network lifetime of MIL-APS is discussed with the system load. In this
experiment, number of nodes is 2000, number of slots is 1000. The results are in Figure 7.

In Figure 7, system load is the number of events in one second. If there is no event, the first node
exhausts after more than 35000 seconds. Network lifetime decreases with the increasing of
system load. MIL-APS is designed to be used for military purposes and the attack of intruder is
not so common in the battlefield. MIL-APS can operate for more than 10 hours. MIL-APS can be
used for securing the environment especially for one night operations.

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Delay
Delay is very important for military applications. Long lifetime is not enough, if it gives
information too late. MIL-APS uses TDMA and constructs a tree. It means delay of events is a
function of distance from event to sink. Delay is investigated for different distance regions.
Network area is divided into 10 regions. The first region is 10m. distant from the sink. The
second is between 10-20m. distant from the sink, and so on. Figure 8 shows average delay of
events for different time slot numbers in these regions.

When distance between the sink and event increases, delay increases dramatically. MIL-APS is
an intruder detection system and early alarm is critical. MIL-APS should give information as
soon as possible, even if event is far from the sink. Even 500 slot is not acceptable. If intruder is
500m. distant and if MIL-APS gives information after 5 seconds, it may be too late.

Rescheduling improves delay very successfully. Delay in rescheduled with 20 sub-slot is 18 times
smaller than non-rescheduled MIL-APS, especially in the 10th region. (the border of the sensor
network area.)

CONCLUSION

In recent years, sensor network is one of the hottest topics in wireless communication area. In this
paper, a new TDMA based sensor networks for military applications(MIL-APS) is proposed. The
most important design objectives of MIL-APS are to prolong network lifetime, to reduce delay
and to be able to operate in large areas.

In order to realize MIL-APS, distributed time scheduling, topology construction and rescheduling
mechanisms are studied. Simulation results have shown that network lifetime of MIL-APS is
long enough to be used as military monitoring. Delay problem sourced form TDMA structure can
be handled by rescheduling mechanism and delay is reduced by up to 18 times.

When a MIL-APS node exhausts, the network system is broken in this version of MIL-APS.
However, sensor nodes are prone to failure and sensor network should be able to fix itself, when a
node fails. As future work, a maintenance algorithm will be developed.

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