- Performance Control in Wireless Sensor Networks

Research on wireless sensor networks (WSNs) has mainly been focused on protocols and architectures for applications in which network performance assurances are not considered essential, such as agriculture and environmental monitoring. However, for many important areas, such as plant automation and health monitoring, performance assurances are crucial, especially for metrics such as delay and reliability.

The GISNENG project plans a significant advance beyond the state-of-the-art by developing a novel performance controlled WSN that is targeted for use in a range of industrial environments. In such environments, WSN technology should result in significant savings in deployment and maintenance costs, and offers easy reconfiguration and rapid deployment in adapting to changing business needs. The overall goal of GINSENG is a wireless sensor network that will meet application-specific performance targets, and that will be proven in a real industry setting where performance is critical.

The GINSENG goal requires several innovations and a fresh approach to wireless sensor network research. Firstly, GINSENG adopts a planned approach for sensor node deployment as a basis to enable performance control. The second basis of GINSENG is software components with assured performance, including operating systems and protocols for radio medium access. The third basis of GINSENG is a set of algorithms that ensure control with respect to network topology and traffic. These three components enable the possibility to deploy sensor networks with assured performance. Recognising the inherent uncertainties of the real-world, GINSENG will also provide mechanisms and tools to perform performance debugging of deployed systems.

To encourage exploitation of the research outputs, GINSENG will integrate with industry IT systems, a proposition strengthened by the participation of SAP as a partner. The applicability of the technology developed in GINSENG will be proven by developing a wireless sensor network for a real-world application where performance is critical – in the context of an oil refinery run by GINSENG partner Petrogal, where it will be used to monitor and control industrial processes, safety and pollution.

GINSENG @ CeBIT 2012

CeBIT 2012. From 06th to 10th of march 2012GINSENG was presented at CeBIT in Hannover. A custom built demonstrator illustrates GINSENG's real-time wirelss industrial automation approach: A total of 7 INGA-Sensor Nodes form a time critical wireless sensor network and connect to a sink which again is connected to the GINSENG middleware. We had more than 500 technical discussions at our booth, exchanged many contact cards and met many interested und intersting people.

Literature

Project members at IBR

Theses

if you are interested in writing a thesis regarding this project, please feel free to contact Dr. Oliver Wellnitz or Prof. Dr. Felix Büsching.

Publications

• Wolf-Bastian Pöttner and Lars Wolf: Opportunistic Data Aggregation in Delay Tolerant Networks, in Proceedings of the Twentieth IEEE Symposium on Computers and Communicationsi (ISCC 2015), Larnaca, Cyprus, July 2015 (PW15, BibTeX)
• Wolf-Bastian Pöttner, Hans Seidel, James Brown, Utz Roedig and Lars Wolf: Constructing Schedules for Time-Critical Data Delivery in Wireless Sensor Networks, in ACM Transactions on Sensor Networks (TOSN), Vol. 10, No. 3, New York, NY, USA, ACM, August 2014 (Poettner:TOSN:2014, BibTeX)
• T. O'Donovan, J. Brown, F. Büsching, A. Cardoso, J. Cecelio, J. do O, P. Furtado, P. Gil, A. Jugel, W-B. Pöttner, U. Roedig, J. sa Silva, R. Silva, C.J. Sreenan, V. Vassiliou, L. Wolf T. Voigt and and Z. Zinonos: The GINSENG System for Wireless Monitoring and Control: Design and Deployment Experiences, in ACM Transactions on Sensor Networks (TOSN), Vol. 10, No. 1, New York, NY, USA, ACM, November 2013 (ODonovan:TOSN:2013, BibTeX)
• Wolf-Bastian Pöttner and Lars C Wolf: Probe-based Transmission Power Control for Dependable Wireless Sensor Networks, in The 9th IEEE International Conference on Distributed Computing in Sensor Systems 2013 (IEEE DCoSS 2013), Cambridge, USA, May 2013 (Poettner:ProbeTPC, BibTeX, Slides)
• Sebastian Schildt, Wolf-Bastian Pöttner, Felix Büsching and Lars C Wolf: RATFAT: ReAl-Time FAT for Cooperative Multitasking Environments in WSNs, in 5th Workshop on Performance Control in Wireless Sensor Networks 2013 (PWSN 2013) in conjuction with IEEE DCOSS 2013, Cambridge, USA, May 2013 (Schi1305:RATFAT, BibTeX, Slides)
• F. Büsching, W. Pöttner, D. Brökelmann, G. von Zengen, R. Hartung, K. Hinz and L. Wolf: A demonstrator of the GINSENG-approach to performance and closed loop control in WSNs, in Networked Sensing Systems (INSS), 2012 Ninth International Conference on, pages 1 -2, June 2012 (Buesching:INSS:2012, DOI, BibTeX, Best Demo Award)
• Sebastian Schildt, Wolf-Bastian Pöttner and Lars C Wolf: Contiki Ring File System for Real-Time Applications, in 4th Workshop on Performance Control in Wireless Sensor Networks 2012 (PWSN 2012) in conjuction with IEEE DCOSS 2012, pages 364 -371, May 2012 (schildt:rfs2012, DOI, BibTeX, Slides)
• Wolf-Bastian Pöttner, Sebastian Schildt, Daniel Meyer and Lars C Wolf: Piggy-Backing Link Quality Measurements to IEEE 802.15.4 Acknowledgements, in The 4th International Workshop on Wireless Sensor, Actuator and Robot Networks (WiSARN-Fall 2011), Valencia, Spain, October 2011 (Poet1110:Piggy, BibTeX, Slides)
• Wolf-Bastian Pöttner, Lars Wolf, José Cecílio, Pedro Furtado, Ricardo Silva, Jorge Sa Silva, Amancio Santos, Paulo Gil, Alberto Cardoso, Zinon Zinonos, Jose Manuel do Ó, Ben McCarthy, James Brown, Utz Roedig, Tony O'Donovan, Cormac J. Sreenan, Zhitao He, Thiemo Voigt and Anja Jugel: WSN Evaluation in Industrial Environments First results and lessons learned, in 3rd Workshop on Performance Control in Wireless Sensor Networks 2011 (PWSN 2011) in conjuction with IEEE DCOSS 2011, PWSN '11, June 2011 (PWSN2011, BibTeX, Slides)
• Wolf-Bastian Pöttner and Lars Wolf: IEEE 802.15.4 packet analysis with Wireshark and off-the-shelf hardware, in Proceedings of the Seventh International Conference on Networked Sensing Systems (INSS2010), Kassel, Germany, June 2010 (PW10, BibTeX, Poster)
• Wolf-Bastian Pöttner, Oliver Wellnitz and Lars Wolf: QoS-AODV6E: An Energy-Balancing QoS Routing Scheme for WSNs, in Proceedings of the Seventh International Conference on Networked Sensing Systems (INSS2010), Kassel, Germany, June 2010 (PWW10, BibTeX, Slides)

Project partners

The EU FP7 research project GINSENG consists of the following institutions:

• University College Cork (Ireland)
• University of Coimbra (Portugal)
• Galp Energia, SA (Portugal)
• SAP AG (Germany)
• Swedish Institute of Computer Science AB (Sweden)
• Technische Universität Carolo-Wilhelmina zu Braunschweig (Germany)
• University of Cyprus (Cyprus)
• Lancaster University (United Kingdom)

Links

• GINSENG - Official Homepage