WIRELESS SENSOR NETWORK FOR MILITARY APPLICATION

CONTENTS

l INTRODUCTION

l CHARACTERISTICS OF WIRELESS SENSOR NETWORKS

l DESIGN CHALLENGES

l OPERATIONAL CHALLENGES OF WIRELESS SENSOR NETWORKS

l TYPES OF SENSOR NETWORK

l APPLICATIONS OF WIRELESS SENSOR NETWORKS

l MILITARY REQUIREMENTS

l WSNS IN MILITARY APPLICATIONS

l CLASSIFICATION
OF MILITARY WSN APPLICATIONS

l DESCRIPTION OF CLASSIFIED APPS

l ENGINEERING & RESEARCH CHALLENGES

l CONCLUSION

l REFERENCES

INTRODUCTION

    “A wireless sensor network (WSN) is a wireless network consisting of spatially distributed autonomous devices using sensors to cooperatively monitor physical or environmental conditions, such as temperature, sound, vibration, pressure, motion or pollutants, at different locations.”

l Formed by hundreds or thousands of motes that communicate with each other and pass data along from one to another

l Research done in this area focus mostly on energy aware computing and distributed computing

 

 

CHARACTERISTICS OF WIRELESS SENSOR NETWORKS

–Wireless Sensor Networks mainly consists of sensors. Sensors are -

–low power

–limited memory

–energy constrained due to their small size.

–Wireless networks can also be deployed in extreme environmental conditions and may be prone to enemy attacks.

–Although deployed in an ad hoc manner they need to be self organized and self healing and can face constant reconfiguration.

DESIGN CHALLENGES

–Heterogeneity

–The devices deployed maybe of various types and need to collaborate with each other.

–Distributed Processing

–The algorithms need to be centralized as the processing is carried out on different nodes.

–Low Bandwidth Communication

–The data should be transferred efficiently between sensors

–Large Scale Coordination

–The sensors need to coordinate with each other to produce required results.

–Utilization of Sensors

–The sensors should be utilized in a ways that produce the maximum performance and use less energy.

–Real Time Computation

–The computation should be done quickly as new data is always being generated.

OPERATIONAL CHALLENGES OF WIRELESS SENSOR NETWORKS

l Energy Efficiency

l Limited storage and computation

l Low bandwidth and high error rates

–Errors are common

–Wireless communication

–Noisy measurements

–Node failure are expected

–Scalability to a large number of sensor nodes

–Survivability in harsh environments

–Experiments are time- and space-intensive

TYPES OF SENSOR NETWORK

–       Depending on the environment

l  terrestrial WSN

l  Ad Hoc (unstructured)

–       Preplanned (structured)

l  underground WSN

l  Preplanned

–       more expensive equipment, deployment, maintenance

l  underwater WSN

l  fewer sensor nodes( sparse deployment)

l  more expensive than terrestrial

–     acoustic wave communication

–     Limited bandwidth

–     long propagation delay

–     signal fading

APPLICATIONS OF WIRELESS SENSOR NETWORKS

l Recent Advances

l Sensor Localization and Location Aware Services

l Smart Home/Smart Office

l Military

l Industrial & Commercial

l Traffic Management and Monitoring

l Structural Healthcare

l Agriculture

l Topology and Coverage Control

l Quality of Service (QoS) Provision

l Mobility management

l Security and Privacy Concern

l Biomedical/Medical

 

l Future Trends

l Cognitive Sensing

l Spectrum Management

l Cognitive radios and multifrequency

l Underwater Acoustic Sensor Systems

l Coordination in Heterogeneous Networks

l TimeCritical

l Applications

l Holes Problem

l Time Synchronization Problem

 

l WSN applications

MILITARY REQUIREMENTS

l In all aspects of military operations:

l distribution of commands, logistical info,

l intelligence, and data from sensors

l ● Requirements:

l - maintained where & when needed;

l - resistant to jamming, direction finding,

l and other electronic warfare threats

l - provide end-to-end message security

l Military engagement scenarios:

l - battlefield: well-known, well-defined enemy;

l - operations in urban environments

l - other than war (OTW), e.g. peacekeeping,

l disaster relief

l - force protection (intersects previous three)

WSNS IN MILITARY APPLICATIONS

l Sensors measuring: electromagnetic energy /

l signals, light, pressure, sound – explosions

–Also: chemical, biological and explosive vapor;

l presence of people or objects

–WSNs: cost-effective gathering of information

l about environment and actors

–Use of WSNs can reduce uncertainty:

l where enemy forces will be deployed; their role

–OTW: Areas at risk of natural disaster;

l location of population to be protected

CLASSIFICATION
OF MILITARY WSN APPLICATIONS

l By types of military operations:

l battlefield, urban, OTW, force protection

–By sensor types:

l - presence/intrusion (IR+photoel.+laser+acoustic);

l - chemical, biological, radiological,

l nuclear and explosive (CBRNE) detectors;

l - ranging (e.g. radar, lidar, ultrasonic);

l - imaging (IR, ladar);

l - noise (acoustic sensor producing audio stream)

–Soldier-worn WSNs: track vital functions – considered

l for force protection and OTW (e.g., firefighters)

DESCRIPTION OF CLASSIFIED APPS

l Self-healing land mines (SHLM): BF&FP; each antitank mine senses threats, responds autonomously by moving; acoustic & accelerometer sensors

 

l Aerostat acoustic payload for transient detection (AAP): BF&FP; acoustic sensor arrays below tethered aerostats, detect & localize small arms fire (DOA), ground sensors augment AAP

 

l Soldier detection and tracking (SDT): U&FP; acoustic & seismic sensors survey specific points; daylight still cameras optional

 

 

l Low-cost acoustic sensors for littoral antisubmarine warfare (ASW): BF (FP); passive & active sonars to detect submarines operating on batteries; short detection range – robust to multipath

l Early attack reaction sensor (EARS): U & FP; manwearable passive acoustic (microphone array) to detect gunshot – relative azimuth & range of the shot origin

l Sniper detection & localization (SDL): FP; two acoustic arrays & video camera (Imaging); triangulation & affirmative image of perpetrator

ENGINEERING & RESEARCH CHALLENGES

l Requirements for future military-use of WSNs

l Physical size & weight not a major constraint

l Rapidly identify neighbors, configure network

l Reasonably static; coverage area 5-20 km2

l Communication range of a node: 250-500m

l 2-way communication gateway-nodes

l Small EM emission

l # nodes mostly < 100; low-med data rates

l Disruption-tolerant

l Identification of several simultaneous events & reliable correlation of information from neighboring nodes

l Classification of objects & events

l Improved integration of different sensor types

l Miniaturization & better robustness of sensors

l Common formats & standards for sensor data communication

 

l Increase WSN usability, flexibility & security

l Security: reputation approaches

l Endurance: energy harvesting, efficiency

l Coverage & connectivity improvement: sensing & communication range (yet covert, small EM emission)

l Information processing, fusion & knowledge: related to coverage for reliable correlation of info across space & time to perform data mining, knowledge engineering

 

Major Challenges

l Spatial Coverage in WSNs

l Supercomputer Processing for WSNs

l Data Mining in WSNs

CONCLUSION

 

l Wireless sensor networks will have a role to play for a number of military purposes such as enemy movement detection and force tracking. Comparing the actual military requirements with the current research and the available products, some misalignments become obvious. Much effort in current academic research is spent on optimization, e.g., routing protocols to work with tens of thousands of nodes, which are assumed to be small, lightweight and cheap.

REFERENCES

l  Wolfpack program, US Defense Advanced Research Projects Agency (DARPA), http://web-ext2.darpa.mil/sto/strategic/wolfpack.html

l  K. Akkaya and M. Younis, “A survey on routing protocols for wire- less sensor networks”, Ad-hoc Netw., no. 3, pp. 325–249, 2005 (first published in Nov. 2003).

l  J. N. Al-Karaki and A. E. Kamal, “Routing techniques in wireless sensor networks: a survey”, IEEE Wirel. Commun., vol. 11, iss. 6, pp. 6–28, 2004.

l  D. Niculescu, “Communication paradigms for sensor networks”, IEEE Commun. Mag., vol. 43, iss. 3, pp. 116–122, 2005.

l  W. Heinzelman, A. Chandrakasan, and H. Balakrishnan, “Energy- efficient communication protocols for wireless microsensor net- works”, in Proc. Int. Conf. Syst. Sci., Hawaii, USA, 2000.

l  S. Lindsey and C. S. Raghavendra, “PEGASIS: power efficient gath- ering in sensor information systems”, in IEEE Aerosp. Conf. Proc., Montana, USA, 2002, vol. 3, pp. 3-1125–3-1130.