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1. Dept. of Computer Science
2. CS 7
3. People
4. Falko Dressler
5. Research

ROSES - Robot Assisted Sensor Networks

Introduction

The development and the control of self-organizing, i.e. self-configuring, self-healing, self-managing, and adaptive communication systems and networks are primary research aspects in the ROSES project. The employed embedded systems, e.g. sensor nodes and mobile robots, are getting smaller, more mobile, and more energy aware. Novel mechanisms in operating systems, communication infrastructure, and applications provide enormous energy savings. Sensor nodes are used for the collection, the processing, and the communication of measurement data. Another research aspect is the combination of mobile robot systems with stationary sensor networks. Such mobility enhancements as well as the limited resources in typical sensor networks lead to new problems, challenges, and solution spaces in terms of efficient data management and communication.

Performance evaluation

For performance analysis of routing protocols for mobile ad hoc networks and wireless sensor networks, we developed a comprehensive simulation model using OMNeT++. The simulation tool already provides modules covering the physical, MAC, and network layer. Additionally, we created specific models for application and non-functional concerns such as energy consumption, network load, latency, and others. Our group developed created one of the first DYMO implementations. In particular, the following models were created for OMNeT++:

• traffic generator for CBR traffic, on-off-traffic or exponentially distributed traffic
• energy model for sensor nodes (Mica2)
• DYMO (dynamic MANET on demand) routing
• IEEE 802.15.4 model

• Christoph Sommer, Isabel Dietrich and Falko Dressler, "A Simulation Model of DYMO for Ad Hoc Routing in OMNeT++," Proceedings of 1st ACM/ICST International Conference on Simulation Tools and Techniques for Communications, Networks and Systems (SIMUTools 2008): 1st ACM/ICST International Workshop on OMNeT++ (OMNeT++ 2008), Marseille, France, March 2008.
• Feng Chen, Nan Wang, Reinhard German and Falko Dressler, "Performance Evaluation of IEEE 802.15.4 LR-WPAN for Industrial Applications," Proceedings of 5th IEEE/IFIP Conference on Wireless On demand Network Systems and Services (WONS 2008), Garmisch-Partenkirchen, Germany, January 2008, pp. 89-96.
• Thomas Halva Labella, Isabel Dietrich and Falko Dressler, "BARAKA: A Hybrid Simulator of SANETs," Proceedings of 2nd IEEE/ACM International Conference on Communiation Systems Software and Middleware (COMSWARE 2007), Bangalore, India, January 2007.
• Isabel Dietrich and Falko Dressler, "On the Lifetime of Wireless Sensor Networks," University of Erlangen, Dept. of Computer Science 7, Technical Report, 04/06, December 2006.
• Feng Chen, Falko Dressler and Armin Heindl, "End-to-End Performance Characteristics in Energy-Aware Wireless Sensor Networks," Proceedings of 9th ACM International Symposium on Modeling, Analysis and Simulation of Wireless and Mobile Systems (MSWiM 2006), 3rd ACM International Workshop on Performance Evaluation of Wireless Ad Hoc, Sensor, and Ubiquitous Networks (PE-WASUN 2006), Torremolinos, Malaga, Spain, October 2006, pp. 41-47.
• Falko Dressler and Isabel Dietrich, "Lifetime Analysis in Heterogeneous Sensor Networks," Proceedings of 9th EUROMICRO Conference on Digital System Design - Architectures, Methods and Tools (DSD 2006), Dubrovnik, Croatia, August 2006, pp. 606-613.

Data-centric routing and in-network data processing

Most routing methods for wireless sensor networks (WSN) are based on general-purpose ad hoc routing techniques. Usually, on-demand path determination based on unambiguous addresses is used to control and manage the current network topology. In WSN, such address-based approaches often lead to severe problems due to several issues: node mobility, energy-saving long sleep-cycles due to infrequent message exchange, and the more general problem of dynamic addressing. Data-centric routing schemes such as flooding or gossiping solve these problems but may lead to congestion or starvation. We propose a data-centric forwarding technique, named weighted probabilistic data dissemination (WPDD), which is based on gossiping. In contrast to other proposals, this method includes an inherent adaptation to changing network conditions. Based on several priorities and probabilities, congestion control is supported as well as prioritized data communication. Based on WPDD, we are working on: dynamic data aggregation, network-centric data processing, and data storage and acquisition.

• Falko Dressler, "Bio-inspired Network-centric Operation and Control for Sensor/Actuator Networks," Springer Transactions on Computational Systems Biology (TCSB), vol. VIII (LNCS 4780), pp. 1-13, 2007.
• Falko Dressler, Isabel Dietrich, Reinhard German and Bettina Krüger, "Efficient Operation in Sensor and Actor Networks Inspired by Cellular Signaling Cascades," Proceedings of 1st ACM/ICST International Conference on Autonomic Computing and Communication Systems (Autonomics 2007), Rome, Italy, October 2007.
• Falko Dressler, Reinhard German and Bettina Krüger, "Adaptive Data Dissemination in Sensor Networks using WPDD," Proceedings of IEEE Frontiers in the Convergence of Bioscience and Information Technologies (FBIT 2007), Jeju, Korea, October 2007, pp. 827-832.
• Falko Dressler, "Network-centric Actuation Control in Sensor/Actuator Networks based on Bio-inspired Technologies," Proceedings of 3rd IEEE International Conference on Mobile Ad Hoc and Sensor Systems (MASS 2006): 2nd IEEE International Workshop on Localized Communication and Topology Protocols for Ad hoc Networks (LOCAN 2006), Vancouver, Canada, October 2006, pp. 680-684.
• Falko Dressler, "Locality Driven Congestion Control in Self-Organizing Wireless Sensor Networks," Proceedings of 3rd International Conference on Pervasive Computing (Pervasive 2005): International Workshop on Software Architectures for Self-Organization, and Software Techniques for Embedded and Pervasive Systems (SASO+STEPS 2005), Munich, Germany, May 2005.

Self-Organization in Sensor and Actor Networks

Control and management of sensor and actor networks (SANET) is a hot topic in the communications community. SANETs represent massively distributed systems that are inherently complex. Therefore, common control paradigms fail in this domain. Self-organization is being discussed as a possible solution for control and management of such networks. While some approaches are inspired by observing natural phenomena, other mechanisms evolved out of technological solutions. In general, it is possible to distinguish some basic techniques: positive and negative feedback loops, interactions with the environment and neighboring systems, and probabilistic methods.

• Falko Dressler, Self-Organization in Sensor and Actor Networks, Chichester, John Wiley & Sons, 2007.
• Falko Dressler, Isabel Dietrich, Reinhard German and Bettina Krüger, "Efficient Operation in Sensor and Actor Networks Inspired by Cellular Signaling Cascades," Proceedings of 1st ACM/ICST International Conference on Autonomic Computing and Communication Systems (Autonomics 2007), Rome, Italy, October 2007.
• Thomas Halva Labella and Falko Dressler, "A Bio-Inspired Architecture for Division of Labour in SANETs," Proceedings of 1st IEEE/ACM International Conference on Bio-Inspired Models of Network, Information and Computing Systems (BIONETICS 2006), Cavalese, Italy, December 2006.
• Falko Dressler, "Self-Organization in Ad Hoc Networks: Overview and Classification," University of Erlangen, Dept. of Computer Science 7, Technical Report, 02/06, March 2006.

Dynamic address management

Several data-centric communication paradigms have been proposed in the domain of wireless sensor networks (WSN). Therefore, the principles of operation and maintenance in such networks are changing in order to control massively distributed systems. Previous addressing schemes fail or produce too much overhead even if only locally unique addresses of sensor nodes are required. We developed a dynamic address allocation scheme for localized address assignments in WSN. This scheme uses a round-based address assignment with subsequent duplicate address detection that operates in a self-organized manner. It inherently allows busy-sleep periods and does not assumes always awake nodes. In order to verify the approach, we implemented the algorithm on Mica2 sensor motes and tested it in a WSN maintenance scenario. The results demonstrate that our method works well for operation and maintenance of WSN without prior address assignments.

• Falko Dressler and Feng Chen, "Dynamic Address Allocation for Self-organized Management and Control in Sensor Networks," International Journal of Mobile Network Design and Innovation (IJMNDI), vol. 2 (2), pp. 116-124, 2007.
• Zheng Yao and Falko Dressler, "Dynamic Address Allocation for Management and Control in Wireless Sensor Networks," Proceedings of 40th Hawaii International Conference on System Sciences (HICSS-40), Waikoloa, Big Island, HI, January 2007, pp. 292b.

Secure communication in WSN

A typical characteristic of wireless ad hoc sensor networks is the error-proneness and, therefore, the unreliability of communication paths. The search for reliable communication methodologies in this area in combination with appropriate security mechanisms has become a main research activity in the networking community. We developed a new approach and an according protocol for usage in ad hoc networks that provides reliable as well as semi-reliable communication services. Additionally, the proposed methodology allows to ensure data integrity and message authentication. The main aspects during the development were the limitations of typical sensor nodes in terms of available resources such as storage, processing power, and energy. Our solution provides the capability of acknowledging correct receptions as well as the check of data integrity and message authentication in a single step. Therefore, a low overhead solution was created providing all the mentioned communication goals.

In many papers investigating security mechanisms and architectures for sensor networks, the performance of the algorithms have been analyzed using simulation models. Unfortunately, mostly the computational effort of cryptographic algorithms is neglected or calculated as a static overhead. In several experimental investigations, we analyzed the cryptographical performance of typical sensor nodes. The results can be used to calibrate simulation models appropriately. The source code used for BTnodes can be downloaded: btnode-ce-1.0.tar.bz2, ccc-flooder.tar.bz2.

• Falko Dressler, "Key Management in Wireless Sensor Networks," in Security in Wireless Mesh Networks, Wireless Networks and Mobile Communications, vol. 6, Yan Zhang, Jun Zheng and Honglin Hu (Eds.), CRC Press, 2008, pp. 491-516.
• Falko Dressler, "Authenticated Reliable and Semi-reliable Communication in Wireless Sensor Networks," International Journal of Network Security (IJNS), vol. 7 (1), pp. 62-69, July 2008.
• Falko Dressler, Yong Guan and Zhen Jiang, "Wireless and Sensor Networks Security (WSNS) - A Retrospection," Proceedings of 4th IEEE International Conference on Mobile Ad Hoc and Sensor Systems (MASS 2007): 3rd IEEE International Workshop on Wireless and Sensor Networks Security (WSNS 2007), Pisa, Italy, October 2007.
• Tobias Limmer, Ruben Gonzalez and Falko Dressler, "Evaluation of real-time aspects of multiparty security on low-power mobile devices," Proceedings of Echtzeit im Alltag: Fachtagung der GI-Fachgruppe Echtzeitsysteme (PEARL 2006), Boppard, Germany, November 2006, pp. 71-80.
• Martin Passing and Falko Dressler, "Experimental Performance Evaluation of Cryptographic Algorithms on Sensor Nodes," Proceedings of 3rd IEEE International Conference on Mobile Ad Hoc and Sensor Systems (MASS 2006): 2nd IEEE International Workshop on Wireless and Sensor Networks Security (WSNS 2006), Vancouver, Canada, October 2006, pp. 882-887.
• Martin Passing and Falko Dressler, "Practical Evaluation of the Performance Impact of Security Mechanisms in Sensor Networks," Proceedings of 31st IEEE Conference on Local Computer Networks (LCN 2006): 1st IEEE International Workshop on Practical Issues in Building Sensor Network Applications (SenseApp 2006), Tampa, FL, November 2006, pp. 623-629.
• Falko Dressler, "Reliable and Semi-reliable Communication with Authentication in Mobile Ad Hoc Networks," Proceedings of 2nd IEEE International Conference on Mobile Ad Hoc and Sensor Systems (MASS 2005): 1st IEEE International Workshop on Wireless and Sensor Networks Security (WSNS 2005), Washington, DC, November 2005, pp. 781-786.

Robot control

We employed multiple software engineering methodologies to develop an easily extensible core system named robrain. The primary application area is the development of extensible software systems for teams of collaborating mobile robots. Using available extensions, the system can be interconnected with sensor networks or entities controling the behavior of a multi-robot system. We already used this system in several courses at our university. We have discovered that several studies can be easily conducted due to the modular structure and the provided remote controllability.

The robrain basis system currently features dynamically loadable mobules (plugins) for motion, sensing (distance, camera), communication (remote control, RPC), and UML2-based control using activity diagrams. For documentation and download please vistit robrain.berlios.de.

• Falko Dressler and Mesut Ipek, "An Extensible System Architecture for Cooperative Mobile Robots," University of Erlangen, Dept. of Computer Science 7, Technical Report, 06/06, December 2006.

Model-based programming

Model-based programming of groups of robots allows to simplify and speed-up the SW development process in the context of multi-robot control. We developed a UML2-based modeling approach, which uses the popular activity diagrams (AD) for specifying actions and action sequences. The approach includes features for task distribution among a number of available robot systems. The base application is implemented in our robrain robot control system. For UML2-AD modeling, for example the IBM rational tools can be used.

• Mesut Ipek, "Aufgabenbeschreibung für mobile Roboterschwärme," Master's Thesis (Diplomarbeit), Department of Computer Sciences, University of Erlangen-Nuremberg, May 2006. (Advisors: Gerhard Fuchs and Falko Dressler)

Software engineering in WSN

The heterogeneity and dynamics in terms of hardware and software configurations is steadily increasing in sensor networks. Therefore, software management is becoming one of the most prominent challenges in this domain. We developed a profile-based software management scheme that consists of a dynamic profile-matching algorithm to identify current SW/HW configurations, an on-demand code generation module, and mechanisms for dynamic network-centric reprogramming of sensor nodes. This scheme can be used for dynamic node reprogramming based on given objectives (global goals), available sensor nodes, and RPC-style profile matching algorithms. A mobile robot system is employed for decision processes and to store the source code repository. Additionally, techniques for dynamic addressing are included to prevent global pre-configuration of all network nodes.

• Falko Dressler, Gerhard Fuchs, Sébastien Truchat, Zheng Yao, Zengyu Lu and Holger Marquardt, "Profile-Matching Techniques for On-demand Software Management in Sensor Networks," EURASIP Journal on Wireless Communications and Networking (JWCN), Special Issue on Mobile Multi-Hop Ad Hoc Networks: from theory to reality, vol. 2007 (Article ID 80619), pp. 10, 2007.
• Wolfgang Schröder-Preikschat, Rüdiger Kapitza, Jürgen Kleinöder, Meik Felser, Katja Karmeier, Thomas Halva Labella and Falko Dressler, "Robust and Efficient Software Management in Sensor Networks," Proceedings of 2nd IEEE/ACM International Conference on Communication System Software and Middleware (COMSWARE 2007): 2nd IEEE International Workshop on Software for Sensor Networks (SensorWare 2007), Bangalore, India, January 2007.
• Sébastien Truchat, Gerhard Fuchs, Steffen Meyer and Falko Dressler, "An Adaptive Model for Reconfigurable Autonomous Services using Profiling," International Journal of Pervasive Computing and Communications (JPCC), Special Issue on Pervasive Management, vol. 2 (3), pp. 247-259, September 2006.
• Zheng Yao, Zengyu Lu, Holger Marquardt, Gerhard Fuchs, Sébastien Truchat and Falko Dressler, "On-demand Software Management in Sensor Networks using Profiling Techniques," Proceedings of 7th ACM International Symposium on Mobile Ad Hoc Networking and Computing (Mobihoc 2006): 2nd ACM International Workshop on Multi-hop Ad Hoc Networks: from theory to reality 2006 (REALMAN 2006), Demo Session, Florence, Italy, May 2006, pp. 113-115.
• Gerhard Fuchs, Sébastien Truchat and Falko Dressler, "Distributed Software Management in Sensor Networks using Profiling Techniques," Proceedings of 1st IEEE/ACM International Conference on Communication System Software and Middleware (COMSWARE 2006): 1st IEEE International Workshop on Software for Sensor Networks (SensorWare 2006), New Dehli, India, January 2006, pp. 1-6.

Localization in SANETs

Navigation of mobile robots requires high-quality localization mechanisms. Typical indoor techniques lack of such precise functionality. Our focus is to demonstrate the ongoing research work in the area of localization in sensor networks. We employ these mechanisms for sensor-based localization assistance for mobile nodes, particularly our robot systems.

• Abdalkarim Awad, Thorsten Frunzke and Falko Dressler, "Adaptive Distance Estimation and Localization in WSN using RSSI Measures," Proceedings of 10th EUROMICRO Conference on Digital System Design - Architectures, Methods and Tools (DSD 2007), Lübeck, Germany, August 2007, pp. 471-478.
• Falko Dressler, "Sensor-Based Localization-Assistance for Mobile Nodes," Proceedings of 4. GI/ITG KuVS Fachgespräch Drahtlose Sensornetze (FGSN 2005), Zurich, Switzerland, March 2005, pp. 102-106.

Battery management and monitoring

With battery driven robot systems performing very sophisticated tasks, increasing demands on the power supply play a critical role. Operation breakdowns are unpredictable unless the state of the battery is known, and the overall performance should be adjusted according to reliable remaining capacity estimations. In our study, we addressed many of the issues related to the management and monitoring of battery packs for mobile robots. Additionally, an implementation for a particular system was developed.

• Nestor Lucas, Cosmin Codrea, Thomas Hirth, Javier Gutierrez and Falko Dressler, "RoBM2: Measurement of Battery Capacity in Mobile Robot Systems," Proceedings of GI/ITG KuVS Fachgespräch Energiebewusste Systeme und Methoden, Erlangen, Germany, October 2005, pp. 13-18.
• Falko Dressler and Gerhard Fuchs, "Energy-aware Operation and Task Allocation of Autonomous Robots," Proceedings of 5th IEEE International Workshop on Robot Motion and Control (RoMoCo 2005), Dymaczewo, Poland, June 2005, pp. 163-168.