Skip to main page content
U.S. flag

An official website of the United States government

Dot gov

The .gov means it’s official.
Federal government websites often end in .gov or .mil. Before sharing sensitive information, make sure you’re on a federal government site.

Https

The site is secure.
The https:// ensures that you are connecting to the official website and that any information you provide is encrypted and transmitted securely.

Access keys NCBI Homepage MyNCBI Homepage Main Content Main Navigation
. 2017 Jan 26;17(2):237.
doi: 10.3390/s17020237.

Practical Considerations in the Implementation of Collaborative Beamforming on Wireless Sensor Networks

Santiago Felici-Castell  1 , Enrique A Navarro  2   3 , Juan J Pérez-Solano  4 , Jaume Segura-García  5 , Miguel García-Pineda  6
Affiliations

Practical Considerations in the Implementation of Collaborative Beamforming on Wireless Sensor Networks

Santiago Felici-Castell et al. Sensors (Basel). .

Abstract

Wireless Sensor Networks (WSNs) are composed of spatially distributed autonomous sensor devices, named motes. These motes have their own power supply, processing unit, sensors and wireless communications However with many constraints, such as limited energy, bandwidth and computational capabilities. In these networks, at least one mote called a sink, acts as a gateway to connect with other networks. These sensor networks run monitoring applications and then the data gathered by these motes needs to be retrieved by the sink. When this sink is located in the far field, there have been many proposals in the literature based on Collaborative Beamforming (CB), also known as Distributed or Cooperative Beamforming, for these long range communications to reach the sink. In this paper, we conduct a thorough study of the related work and analyze the requirements to do CB. In order to implement these communications in real scenarios, we will consider if these requirements and the assumptions made are feasible from the point of view of commercial motes and their constraints. In addition, we will go a step further and will consider different alternatives, by relaxing these requirements, trying to find feasible assumptions to carry out these types of communications with commercial motes. This research considers the nonavailability of a central clock that synchronizes all motes in the WSN, and all motes have identical hardware. This is a feasibility study to do CB on WSN, using a simulated scenario with randomized delays obtained from experimental data from commercial motes.

Keywords: collaborative beamforming; cooperative beamforming; distributed beamforming; wireless sensor networks.

PubMed Disclaimer

Conflict of interest statement

The authors declare no conflict of interest. The founding sponsors had no role in the design of the study; in the collection, analyses, or interpretation of data; in the writing of the manuscript, and in the decision to publish the results.

Figures

Figure 1
Figure 1
Example of a Collaborative Beamforming in a WSN placed over a surface to create a beam and reach a receiver placed on a satellite.
Figure 2
Figure 2
(a) linear array and (b) planar array.
Figure 3
Figure 3
Detail of the TI CC2420 transceiver connected to the microcontroller.
Figure 4
Figure 4
Measuring the Start Frame Delimiter delay with a receiver–receiver scheme.
Figure 5
Figure 5
Distribution of time delay synchronization between TelosB motes (experimental measurements) and associated Probability Density Function.
Figure 6
Figure 6
System on Chip: design of a mote with internal connection between the MicroController Units (MCU) and the radio transceiver.
Figure 7
Figure 7
Example of Meteor Burst Communications.
Figure 8
Figure 8
16 TelosB motes deployed in a straight line to do beamforming in 2.44 GHz with l=λ4 mote spacing.
Figure 9
Figure 9
Ideal array pattern for 10 motes in an uniform linear array with perfect zero delays pointing to 90° and one randomized trial (dashed line) of CB using the experimentally obtained PDF to generate the delays.
Figure 10
Figure 10
Histogram of CB signal deviation from the ideal uniform array pattern for a given pointing angle.
Figure 11
Figure 11
Average value of the array pattern calculated following an MonteCarlo (MC) simulation M = 104, for 900 MHz and 2.44 GHz (dashed).
Figure 12
Figure 12
Ideal array pattern for 10 × 5 motes in a planar 2D uniform array with perfect zero delays pointing to ϕ = 0° and 0° < θ < 180°, compared against 10 CB trials, using the experimentally obtained PDF to generate the delays for 2.44 GHz.
Figure 13
Figure 13
Average value of the planar 2D uniform array pattern calculated following a MC simulation M = 103 with ϕ = 0° and 0° < θ < 180° for 900 GHz.
See this image and copyright information in PMC

References

    1. IEEE Task Group 4 Standard 802.15.4-2006. [(accessed on 14 January 2016)]. Available online: http://www.ieee802.org/15/pub/TG4.html.
    1. Strazdins G., Elsts A., Nesenbergs K., Selavo L. Wireless Sensor Network Operating System Design Rules Based on Real-World Deployment Survey. J. Sens. Actuator Netw. 2013;2:509–556. doi: 10.3390/jsan2030509. - DOI
    1. Brown D.R., III, Poor H.V. Time-slotted round-trip carrier synchronization for distributed beamforming. IEEE Trans. Signal Process. 2008;56:5630–5643. doi: 10.1109/TSP.2008.927073. - DOI
    1. Ochiai H., Mitran P., Poor H.V., Tarokh V. Collaborative beamforming for distributed wireless ad hoc sensor networks. IEEE Trans. Signal Process. 2005;53:4110–4124. doi: 10.1109/TSP.2005.857028. - DOI
    1. Mudumbai R., Brown D.R., Madhow U., Poor H.V. Distributed Transmit Beamforming: Challenges and Recent Progress. Commun. Mag. 2009;47:102–110. doi: 10.1109/MCOM.2009.4785387. - DOI

LinkOut - more resources