CS-541

Wireless Sensor Networks

Lecture 2: Protocol stacks, and wireless networks prerequisites
Part A

Spring Semester 2016-2017

Prof Panagiotis Tsakalides, Dr Athanasia Panousopoulou, Dr Gregory Tsagkatakis

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Today’s Objectives

• Part A: Wireless Links: Signal Propagation, Handling the Spectrum,

Modelling the PHY performance

• Part B: Protocol stack preliminaries for WSN

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Wireless Links – Radio Spectrum
• Radio Spectrum: The part of the electromagnetic spectrum (8.3KHz –
3 THz) allocated by ITU for radio communications.

Holger Karl, Andreas Willig, Protocols and Architectures for Wireless

Sensor Systems, 2005, Willey, Ch. 4

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Wireless Links – Radio Spectrum
Relationship between frequency
(f) and wave length (λ):
λ = c/f
where c is the speed of light

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Wireless Links – Radio Spectrum
UHF (300-3000MHz): WLAN, GSM/GPRS
SHF (3-30GHz): radio astronomy, microwaves WLAN,
satellites communications, modern mobile telephony
+ WSN

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 Wireless Links – Radio Spectrum
The radio spectrum is not for Starts Ends Range Center Availability
free or arbitrary use – usage
varies w.r.t. the national Subject to
regulations… 6.765 MHz 6.795 MHz 30 kHz 6.780 MHz national
regulations

• Some of these bands are 13.553 MHz 13.567 MHz 14 kHz 13.560 MHz Worldwide
reserved, some are
licensed and some are 26.957 MHz 27.283 MHz 326 kHz 27.120 MHz Worldwide
open / unlicensed.
40.660 MHz 40.700 MHz 40 kHz 40.680 MHz Worldwide

• ISM band – free to use Europe,

Africa, M.
434.790 MH
433.050 MHz 1.74 MHz 433.920 MHz East, former
z
• Typical WSN applications SU,
& manufacturers exploit Mongolia
this band US,
Greenland,
928.000 MH
• @2.4GH & 5.8GHz bands: 902.000 MHz
z
26 MHz 915.000 MHz Eastern
Pacific
coexistence with WiFi
devices Islands

2.400 GHz 2.500 GHz 100 MHz 2.450 GHz Worldwide

5.725
CS-541 GHz
Wireless 5.875 GHz
Sensor Networks 150 MHz 5.800 GHz Worldwide
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 Wireless Links – Signal Propagation
Range in wireless communications:
Depends on:

• Operational frequency
• Transmission power
• Gain / Type of the antenna &
hardware differences
• Sensitivity of the receiver S
• Type of environment &
propagation mechanism
Transmission • Ambient conditions & co-existence
Range of other devices
Detection Range

Interference Range
In theory
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 Wireless Links – Signal Propagation
Range in wireless communications:

In reality
Anisotropic Path Losses

In theory
Gang Zhou et. al 2006. Models and solutions for radio irregularity in wireless sensor
8
CS-541 Wireless Sensor Networks networks.
ACM Trans. Sen. Netw. 2, 2 (May 2006), 221-262.
Spring Semester 2016-2017
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 Wireless Links – Signal Propagation
Range in wireless communications:

In reality
Anisotropic Path Losses
• Operational frequency
• Transmission power: different power yields
different range
• Gain / Type of the antenna & hardware
differences: dipole Vs embedded antennas
• Sensitivity of the receiver
• Type of environment & propagation
mechanism: Variance in the signal path loss

Gang Zhou et. al 2006. Models and solutions for radio irregularity in wireless sensor
9
CS-541 Wireless Sensor Networks networks.
ACM Trans. Sen. Netw. 2, 2 (May 2006), 221-262.
Spring Semester 2016-2017
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 Wireless Links – Signal Propagation
Range in wireless communications: (a) (b)

In reality

(c) (e)

At the same distance & with constant

transmission power, even the relative
position of the tx-rx pair matters!

10
CS-541 Wireless Sensor Networks
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Wireless Links – Signal Propagation
Radio Propagation dictates the behavior of a transmitted radio wave:
• How signal is attenuated with respect to distance between transmitter and
receiver
• How signal is affected by the surrounding environment (e.g. line of sight,
types of obstacles, etc)
• How signal fluctuates over very short distances or very short time durations.

Radio propagation models: predict the average received signal strength at a

given distance from the transmitter, & the time variability of the signal
strength at a given location.

• Large-scale path-loss: estimating the signal strength Vs distance

• Small-scale / fading: variations over very short distances, time, and
frequencies

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 Wireless Links – Signal Propagation
Small-scale
dBm

Large-scale

P mW to X dBm: Distance (m)

Rappaport T. “Wireless Communications: Theory and
X = 10log10(P/1mW) = 30+10log10P Practice”, 2nd Edition, 2002

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Wireless Links – Signal Propagation

• Large-scale path-loss: Theoretical Model is the Free Space Model

𝑃𝑡𝑥 𝐺𝑡𝑥 𝐺𝑟𝑥 𝜆2

𝑃𝑟𝑥 𝑑 = (𝑊)
16𝜋 2 𝑑 2 𝐿
Transmitter

• Path-loss: difference (in dB) between the 𝑑

transmission and reception power:

𝑃𝑡𝑥 Receiver
𝑃𝐿(𝑑𝐵) = 10𝑙𝑜𝑔
𝑃𝑟𝑥

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Wireless Links – Signal Propagation

• Large-scale path-loss:
• Reflection: the wave bounces on an object which has
very large dimensions when compared to the
wavelength of the propagated wave. The signal is
partially reflected and partially transmitted through
the medium (absorbed)
• Material properties
• Angle of reflection
• Frequency of wave.
tx Direct path
Also:
Ground reflection: direct path and the ground rx
reflected path between a tx-rx pair: ℎ𝑡𝑥 Secondary
𝑃𝑡𝑥 𝐺𝑡𝑥 𝐺𝑟𝑥 path ℎ𝑟𝑥
𝑃𝑟𝑥 𝑑 = 4
(ℎ𝑡𝑥 ℎ𝑟𝑥 )2 (𝑊)
𝑑
𝑑 ≫ ℎ𝑡𝑥 + ℎ𝑟𝑥
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 Wireless Links – Signal Propagation

Large-scale path loss:

• Diffraction: the signal encounters an irregular surface, such as a stone with sharp edges.

• Scattering: the medium through which the electromagnetic wave propagates contains a
large number of objects with dimensions smaller than the signal wavelength. Signal is
diffused in different directions → Additional radio energy arrives at the receiver.

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Wireless Links – Signal Propagation

Small-scale phenomena:
Caused by the macroscopic behavior of the transmitted wave -
reflection, diffraction, scattering -> Fading due to interference of the
same signal arriving at the receiver at different times.

Delay spread: the duration of the “echo” generated by the difference in arrival
times.

Inter-symbol interference: Second multipath is delayed and is received

during next symbol

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Wireless Links – Signal Propagation

Analytical & empirical models conclude to the observation that signal

attenuates logarithmically to the distance between TX – RX.

Log-normal shadowing model:

Environmental clutter
𝑃𝑟𝑥 𝑑 [𝑑𝐵𝑚] = 𝑃𝑡𝑥 [𝑑𝐵𝑚] − 𝑃𝐿(𝑑) (𝑑𝐵)

𝑑
𝑃𝐿 𝑑 = 𝑃𝐿 𝑑0 + 10𝑛𝑙𝑜𝑔10 + 𝑋𝜎 (𝑑𝐵)
𝑑0

n: path-loss exponent
σ: std of zero-mean Gausian distributed random variable X (dB)

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 Wireless Links – Signal Propagation

Environment path-loss exponent n

Urban Area 2.7 to 3.5
Suburban Area 3 to 5
Indoors (LOS) 1.6 to 1.8
Indoors (no-LOS) 4 to 6
Industrial (no-LOS) 2 to 3

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 Wireless Links – Signal Propagation

Log-normal shadowing empirical model

n, σ: Data measurements over a wide range of locations and tx-rx distance, then
linear regression…

Environment Frequency n σ (dB)

Vacuum, infinite space 2.0 0
Retail store 914 MHz 2.2 8.7
Grocery store 914 MHz 1.8 5.2
Office with hard partition 1.5 GHz 3.0 7
Office with soft partition 900 MHz 2.4 9.6
Office with soft partition 1.9 GHz 2.6 14.1
Textile or chemical 1.3 GHz 2.0 3.0
Textile or chemical 4 GHz 2.1 7.0, 9.7
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Wireless Links – Signal Propagation

Urban

Industrial

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Wireless Links - Signal Propagation

Office Environment

William Stallings, Data and Computer Communications, 7th Edition, Ch. 9.

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 Wireless Links – How to handle the spectrum

Spread Spectrum:
• Compensates from interference and fading – allows multiple users on the same
bandwidth
• The transmission bandwidth >> minimum required signal bandwidth
• Transmitter: pseudo-noise sequence for spreading signal (seed, algorithm)
• Receiver side: cross-correlation with a locally generated pseudo-noise sequence

William Stallings, Data and Computer

Communications, Ch. 9, 7th Edition

Multipath fading: CS-541 Wireless Sensor Networks

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Delayed spread signal will correlate poorly with receiver→ interfering signals will be discarded
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Wireless Links – How to handle the spectrum

• Spread Spectrum

• Direct Sequence Spread Spectrum

• Frequency Hopping

• Chirp Sequence Spread Spectrum

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Wireless Links – How to handle the spectrum

• Spread Spectrum
• Direct Sequence Spread Spectrum Widely adopted technique for WSN

The baseband signal is directly multiplied by the pseudo-noise sequence → each

bit is represented by multiple bits.
transmitted signal>> information signal

At the receiver: the de-spreading of the signal results at spreading the

interference over an larger bandwidth

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 Wireless Links – How to handle the spectrum
Direct Sequence Spread Spectrum – Example

William Stallings, Data and Computer Communications, 7th Edition, Ch. 9.

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 Wireless Links – How to handle the spectrum
• Spread Spectrum
• Frequency Hopping Spread Spectrum: BT & BSN based on BT

The pseudo-noise sequence is used for changing the transmission frequency ->

Signal broadcast over seemingly random series of frequencies

The transmitted
William Stallings, Data and Computer Communications, Ch. 9, carrier hops from
7th Edition one channel to
another – small
bursts / channel
Receiver: remain in
synchronization with
the transmitter for
recovering the initial
signal.
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 Wireless Links – How to handle the spectrum
• Spread Spectrum
• Frequency Hopping Spread Spectrum: BT & BSN based on BT

If a signal is send over at the same time & the same channel with another signal then there will
be a collision

• FH/Time Division: more than one users use the same sequence
• Adaptive FH: allows skipping certain frequencies that are used by non-hopping ISM systems.

Static Frequency Allocation Adaptive Frequency Allocation

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Wireless Links – How to handle the spectrum
WSN in RF-harsh environments / tracking apps / Long Range WSN!
• Spread Spectrum
• Chirp Spread Spectrum:
NEW!!!
Windowed chirp: a sinusoidal signal whose
frequency changes linearly over a time window.

No pseudo-noise elements (DSSS, FH)

Subchirps: patterns of smaller chirps
Used in different frequency sub-bands with different chirp
directions
Concatenated to construct a chirp symbol
Provides division of subchirp sequences and frequency
division.

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Wireless Links – PHY performance

• Signal distortion
• Noise due to electronics (RF design) – Additive white noise Gaussian
Channel
• Interference:
• intra network (> 1 users on the same type of network &the same channel)
• Adjacent channels (HW filters)
• Inter network: different types of networks (e.g. WSN + WiFi) on overlapping
channels

• Additional factors that can affect interference:

• Transmission power
• Channel bandwidth
• Spectrum spreading mechanism & medium access scheme

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Wireless Links – PHY Performance

• Signal-to-Noise-plus-Interference Ratio

The ability of the

receiver to decouple
the interfering
signals
• Bit Error Rate (with respect to type of modulation & data rate R):

DPSK:
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 Wireless Links and WSN

• WSN
• Small transmission range (most of them)
• Small delay spread (nanoseconds, compared to micro/milliseconds for
symbol duration)
• WSN fading is typically considered flat (SS techniques are helping):

BW of signal < BW of the channel

Delay Spread < Symbol period

+ the spectral characteristics of the transmitted signal are preserved at the

receiver
- the received signal strength may change over time due to multipath &
inter-symbol interference (depending on the type of the environment,
antenna & HW )
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Wireless Links and WSN
• Channel modelling for capturing Rayleigh channel
the temporal behavior of a wireless

CDF
channel / environment (modeling
SNR or BER) Statistical time varying
attributes - no LOS

Log normal

Ricean

CDF
32

Primary non LOS + 2ndary LOS

Or design your own model
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 References and Material for Reading
Rappaport T. “Wireless Communications: Theory and Practice”, 2nd Edition, 2002, Ch. 4 &5

Holger Karl, Andreas Willig, Protocols and Architectures for Wireless Sensor Systems, 2005, Willey, Ch. 4

Gang Zhou et. al 2006. Models and solutions for radio irregularity in wireless sensor networks. ACM
Trans. Sen. Netw. 2, 2 (May 2006), 221-262

Stein, John C. "Indoor radio WLAN performance part II: Range performance in a dense office
environment." Intersil Corporation 2401 (1998).

William Stallings, Data and Computer Communications, 7th Edition, Ch. 9.

Dag Grini, “RF basics for non-RF engineers”, available at http://www.slideshare.net/SAIFUUU/rf-basics-

15017995

IEEE802.15 Working Group. Chirp Spread Spectrum (CSS) PHY Presentation for 802.15.4a. Date
Submitted: January 04, 2005. Source: John Lampe Company: Nanotron

Karapistoli, Eirini, et al. "An overview of the IEEE 802.15. 4a standard." Communications Magazine, IEEE
48.1 (2010): 47-53.
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Next Lecture

Lecture 1: Introduction to WSN and CS-541 course

Lecture 2: Protocol stacks, and wireless networks prerequisites. Part B
Lecture 3: Network standards for Personal and Body-area networks
Lecture 4: Signal processing prerequisites.
Lecture 5: Signal Sampling for WSN
Lecture 6: Radio Duty Cycling in WSN
Lecture 7: Routing in WSN
Lecture 8: Data models and data acquisition
Lecture 9: Machine Learning for WSN
Lecture 10: Introduction to WSN programming
Lecture 11: Hands on Session I
Lecture 12: Machine learning applications in WSN
Lecture 13: Invited Lecture I
Lecture 14: Hands on Session II
Lecture 15: Special issues in WSN: Deployment & Coverage
Lecture 16: Invited Lecture II
Lecture 17: Big Data & IoT
Lecture 18: Projects progress presentations

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Wireless Links – Signal Propagation
The different signal copies have different relative delays, which translate for each frequency component of the
signal into different relative phase shifts at the receiver. Depending on the relative phase shift of the signal
components. The frequency (non-)selectivity of a channel is closely related to its time dispersion or delay spread,
more exactly to the RMS delay spread value.6 The coherence bandwidth captures, for a given propagation
environment, the range of frequencies over which a channel can be considered flat; it is defined as the inverse of
the RMS delay spread times a constant factor. A channel is a flat fading channel if the full signal bandwidth is
smaller than the coherence bandwidth.
For wireless sensor networks with their small transmission ranges (leading to small RMS delay spread) and their
comparably low symbol rates, it is reasonable to assume flat fading channels. When transmitter and receiver
move relatively to each other, the number and relative phase offset of the multiple paths changes over time and
the received signal strength can fluctuate on the order of 30–40 dB within short time; this is called fast fading or
multipath fading.
Depending on the relative speed, the fluctuations occur at timescales of tens to hundreds of milliseconds.

The importance of fading is its impact on the receiver. Since any receiver needs a minimum signal strength to have
a chance for proper demodulation, a fade with its resulting drop in received signal strength is a source of errors.
When the signal strength falls below this threshold because of fast fading, this is called a deep fade. When judging
fast fading channels, specifically the rate at which the signal falls below this threshold (the level-crossing rate) and
the duration of the deep fades are important. Qualitatively, fading channels tend to show bursty errors, that is,
symbol errors tend to occur in clusters separated by error free periods. Another source of errors (predominantly)
caused by multipath propagation is InterSymbol Interference (ISI): When the transmitter transmits its symbols
back-to-back, the presence of multiple paths with different delays can lead to a situation where waveforms
belonging to some symbol st and reaching the receiver on an Line Of Sight (LOS) path overlap with delayed copies
of previously sent symbols st−1, st−2, . . . . The severity of ISI depends on the relationship between the symbol
duration and the RMS delay spread.

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