IPP HurrayISEPCISTER
HomeResearch AreasProjectsPhD StudiesPublicationsPeopleInfo & ContactsISEPFCT
Join Us!
Candid Camera
Enjoy Porto!
. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .
Login
Home

Research Areas

. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .

Wireless Sensor Networks (WSN) 

Research Leader:

Mário Alves

Other PIs and Researchers:

Eduardo Tovar (PI)
Björn Andersson (PI)
Anis Koubâa (PI)
Shashi Prabh (PI)
Paulo Gandra Sousa (PI)
Stefano Tenina (PI)
Nuno Pereira
Petr Jurcik
Ricardo Severino
Ricardo Gomes
Claro Noda
Hossein Fotouhi
Maryam Vahabi
Denis Rosário
Manish Batsa
Nouha Baccour (external collaborator, ReDCAD Research Unit, ENIS, Tunisia)

Synopsys

Wireless Sensor Networks (WSNs) are triggering a new era in Information and Communication Technologies. These networks of tiny embedded computing systems are enabling a new set of large-scale monitoring and control applications such as for pervasive Internet, homeland security, critical physical infrastructures monitoring, precision agriculture, environmental monitoring or intelligent transportation systems.

CISTER has been assuming international leadership in the WSNs scientific area, namely on supporting Quality-of-Service (QoS), particularly focusing on timeliness and real-time, reliability and energy-efficiency aspects.

We are addressing the use of both standard and COTS technology and cutting-edge solutions designed from scratch. CISTER pursues excellence-level collaborative R&D sustained by analytical, simulation and experimental models.


On Going Research

CISTER researchers are world leaders on IEEE 802.15.4 and ZigBee technologies (ART-WiSe). We have provided methodologies to analyze, dimension and engineer WSNs with improved QoS and the open-ZB toolset has been made publicly available (over 85000 visits and 6000 downloads - average 4-5 downloads per day). It includes: (i) the implementation of the IEEE 802.15.4 protocol in TinyOS, for the MICAz and TelosB motes; (ii) the implementation of the ZigBee Network Layer for supporting synchronized multiple cluster topologies (the Cluster-Tree topology) in TinyOS, for the TelosB motes; (iii) simulation models of the IEEE 802.15.4 and ZigBee protocols in OPNET; (iv) a MATLAB tool for timing analysis and network dimensioning, based on Network Calculus. This framework triggered the creation of the TinyOS 15.4 and ZigBee Working Groups, in which CISTER researchers are actively involved.

In what respects WSN research within the CONET NoE, CISTER is leading the COTS4QoS and participating in the RMA and UICO research clusters. In COTS4QoS we are essentially interested on enabling/improving different QoS properties in WSNs using standard and COTS technologies as a baseline. RMA focuses on resource management and adaptation in WSNs and BSNs, addressing radio diversity, interference modelling and link quality estimation. In UICO we are addressing Ubiquitous Integration of Cooperating Objects for Urban Sensing scenarios.

CISTER researchers have been doing cutting edge research on radio link quality estimation, which is a basic building block for supporting higher level protocols and mechanims such as routing, mobility management, fault-tolerance, deployment and topology control. We have proposed an innovative link quality estimator (LQE) based on Fuzzy Logic (F-LQE) that shows significant benefits over existing ones. This was tested and validated through extensive simulation and experimental studies based on RadiaLE - a benchmarking testbed for the performance evaluation of LQEs, available as an open-source.

CISTER researchers have also been fostering research work on Hexagonal WSNs, in which nodes are logically connected to six peer neighbor nodes. This network model enables simple and low-overhead protocols, which are very atractive from the point of view of resource constrained WSNs and bounded end-to-end communication delays (for fulfilling real-time requirements).

Another paradigmatic example on how CISTER aims at pushing the state-of-the-art in WSNs is on building a real-world deployment with 10000 nodes (one order of magnitude higher that the largest WSN deployed so far), within the context and timeframe (3 years) of the EMMON project, lead by Portuguese hi-tech company Critical Software. Within this project we are investigating on a feasible network architecture for such a large number of WSN nodes, coping with QoS properties such as timeliness and scalability. We also aim at providing over the air programming and efficient data aggregation algorithms for such large-scale deployments.

Projects & Leadership

International Projects

We are participating in the EMMON project, within the Artemis programme. CISTER leads WP4 “Research on Protocols & Communication Systems” and several tasks related to the specification of the WSN architecture and the design of time and energy-efficient data aggregation and resource allocation mechanisms.

CISTER is a core partner in the European Network of Excellence on Cooperating Objects (CONET). Under CONET and more related to the WSN area, we are leading the COTS4QoS (QoS provision using COTS) and participating in the RMA (resource management and adaptation) and UICO (ubiquitous integration of cooperating objects) research clusters.

National Projects

We are leading FCT funded project ReWin, where we aim at developing methods to offer real-time guarantees to individual real-time flows over multi-hop WSN of arbitrary node deployments and arbitrary traffic pattern.

International Leadership

Guest editors of a Special Section on "From Embedded Systems to Cooperating Objects" of the IEEE Transactions on Industrial Informatics, under preparation.

Organization of the International Workshop on Real Time Networks (RTN'08) and the International Workshop on Cyber-Physical Systems Challenges and Applications (CPS-CA'09). Co-organization of the SensorNets'09 school.

Tutorial at the Intenational CONET Summer School, "Distributed Data Storage, Dissemination and Processing", Bertinoro, Italy, July 2009.

EWSN 2009 Award Best MSc Thesis: On the use of IEEE 802.15.4/ZigBee for Time-Sensitive Wireless Sensor Network Applications.  

Tutorial at the 6th European Conference on Wireless Sensor Networks (EWSN'09), Cork, Ireland, February 2009 (slides available).

Relevant Publications

  1. The RTSS'06 Paper provides a methodology to analyse cluster-tree networks, based on the use of Network Calculus for WSNs;
  2. The ECRTS'06 Paper improves the bandwidth utilization of the contention-free period (CFP) in the IEEE 802.15.4 superframe, by proposing a methodology (i-GAME) for allowing several nodes to share a GTS (selected  among 4 best papers for a journal publication);
  3. In the ECRTS'07 Paper we proposed a solution to efficiently schedule beacons/superframes in ZigBee cluster-tree networks (TDBS) in a way to avoid inter-cluster collisions (Best Paper Award, selected for a journal publication);
  4. Our MASS'07 paper proposes the open-ZB open-source implementation of the IEEE 802.15.4/ZigBee protocol stack on TinyOS (selected as one of the 12 long papers with <5% (12/265) long paper acceptance ratio);
  5. The RTCSA'08 paper presents a methodology for worst-case analysis and dimensioning of cluster-tree WSNs with mobile sinks;
  6. Ricardo Severino MSc Thesis (EWSN’09 Best Master Thesis Award) proposes a very simple but extremely effective solution (H-NAME) for mitigating the hidden-node problem in WSNs, successfully applied to IEEE 802.15.4/ZigBee; also published in the IEEE Transactions on Industrial Informatics, v 5, nº3, August 2009;
  7. In ETFA '09, we propose and experimentally validate a distributed algorithm for logical Hexagonal WSN topology formation;
  8. The EWSN'10 paper presents an innovative link quality estimator based on Fuzzy Logic (F-LQE), improving on existing ones, as earlier identified by simulation in the MASCOTS'09 paper. F-LQE This was extensively tested and validated through both simulation and experimentation, building upon RadiaLE - an open-source benchmarking testbed for the performance evaluation of LQEs.

 

. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .