Abstract:
IEEE802.15.4 Low-Rate Wireless Personal Area Networks (LR-WPANs) are envisioned to play
an important role in application centric ubiquitous networks such as Wireless Sensor Networks (WSN).
Interconnection of these networks with Internet and with other WPANs in close proximity is essential for
effectively organizing, managing and utilizing these networks. Ubiquitous role of WSN can be realized
through interconnection with adjacent WSNs as well as with infrastructure networks which can be direct
or hopping through bordering WSNs. An example scenario is environmental monitoring of large
geographical area where clusters of WSN jointly ensure the ubiquitous presence of WSN. These clusters
would require collaboration among themselves in addition to management through infrastructure network.
Similarly in critical, mission oriented military applications multiple groups form WSN clusters which
require reliable code update in addition to inter-cluster collaboration for information sharing.
This thesis addresses challenges in interconnection of LR-WPANs with Internet and with other
WPANs in close proximity. In addition to reliable and timely code dissemination to WSN from
infrastructure network, there is a need for procedural details to carry out efficient cluster diffusion for
inter-PAN communication when multiple PANs operating in distinct logical channels are in close
proximity of each other. This work presents two innovative and comprehensive architectures that provide
complete solutions for above mentioned research problems while covering all related design elements.
A complete architecture for efficient TCP realization in IPv6 based Low-Power Personal Area
Network (6LoWPAN) is presented as solution to Internet interconnection research challenge. The
6LoWPAN is a protocol specification that enables communication of Internet Protocol version 6 (IPv6)
packets on top of IEEE802.15.4 so that Internet and WSNs can be inter-connected. In commercial and
enterprise applications of WSNs reliable and timely multiple/repeated code updates are required from
Internet hosts to sensor nodes. For such inbound data traffic which is in general heavy, time-sensitive and loss-intolerant, TCP as transport layer protocol is essential such that end-to-end TCP sessions from
Internet node(s) to sensor nodes through a default gateway are set up. In this situation, a single gateway is
likely to form the bottleneck of connection due to non-uniform connectivity to sensor nodes and is also
susceptible to buffer overflow. The solution to this problem, Session layer-assisted Efficient TCP
management architecture (SET) is a management architecture that establishes and manages multiple split-
TCP sessions across a number of available gateways. SET performs multiple-TCP-sessions management
and executes data striping through shim at session layer. Through analytical modeling and simulations
using NS2, it is demonstrated that SET architecture optimizes communication for incoming bulk data
transfer, at the same time offering related load balancing services. Multiple split-TCP sessions handled in
parallel across a number of gateways results in reducing end-to-end latency for bulk data transfer and
prevents absolute communication failure in case of gateway failure.
For effective inter-WPAN association, a comprehensive architecture, COmmoN-iNterest basEd
diffusion of Collocated PANs via gaTing at border nodes (CONNECT) is proposed that executes
diffusion of neighboring PANs. In IEEE802.15.4 networks when multiple PANs are present in Personal
Operating Space (POS), they function in non-interfering logical channels. This way, capacity of PAN-
directed broadcast is restricted, received-energy per PAN device is reduced and interference at physical
layer is minimized. At the down side, under this type of configuration, inter-PAN communication is not
possible because PANs in the same region remain unaware of each other’s presence. CONNECT
architecture supports communication between multiple PANs in the same POS that might be operating in
different logical channels. It enables neighboring PANs to communicate by diffusing into each other
through “bordering nodes” called “connect nodes”. The main idea is to time share logical channels such
that a gating operation is performed by nodes residing at the border of two non-interfering PANs.
CONNECT architecture executes procedures; identification of border nodes by PAN coordinator,
discovery of neighboring PAN(s), assigning duty cycle and gating command to border nodes, interest
solicit from sensor nodes and data transfer across PANs. CONNECT framework is mathematicall
analyzed and NS2 simulations are performed to demonstrate communication aspects at connect nodes to
show their usability for diffusion.