AWSN

Part A

1. What are the performance requirements for a MAC protocol?

Throughput,
efficiency,
stability,
fairness,
low access delay (time between packet arrival and first attempt to transmit it),
low transmission delay (time between packet arrival and successful delivery),
low overhead.

2. Write the concept of wake up radio.

 Wake up Radios are the basic circuits for the on-demand communications
scheme.
 Wake-up radio monitors the communication channel and wakes up the main
transceiver whenever required.
 It handles the sending and receiving of wake up messages that switch on the
main processing unit or the main radio of the required node.
 It Mitigate the problem of ideal listening which incurs additional power
consumption.
The basic requirements for wake up radio based wireless sensor networks are
• Low power consumption
• High sensitivity.
• Resistance to interference.
• Fast wake-up.

3. Differentiate flooding and gossiping.

Flooding Gossiping
Each node forward every message to every one Data is only forwarded to one randomly
of its neighbors except the source node. Packets selected neighbor node
are sent to all the nodes in the network
No routing algorithms and topology maintenance Routing algorithm is used
is used
Easy to implement Difficult to implement
Resource blindness. The nodes do not take into Save energy
account their resources to limit their
functionalities
Involve Implosion problem. An implosion is Avoid the implosion as the sensor
detected because nodes redundantly receive transmits the message to a selected
multiple copies of the same data message neighbor instead of informing all its
neighbors
It has Overlap Problem No overlap problem
 4. Relate the contention based protocols with schedule based protocols.
Schedule-based MAC
 A schedule exists, regulating which participant may use which resource at which time
(TDMA component)
 Schedule can be fixed or computed on demand. only one neighbor gets an opportunity
and collisions are avoided
 Usually: mixed – difference fixed/on demand is one of time scales
 When a node knows its allocated slots and can be sure that it communicates
(transmits/receives) only in these slots, it can safely switch off its receiver at all other
times. So overhearing, idle listening are avoided
 Time synchronization is needed.
Contention-based protocols
 Risk of colliding packets is deliberately taken
 Coordination overhead can be saved, resulting in overall improved efficiency
 Mechanisms to handle/reduce probability/impact of collisions required
 Usually, randomization used somehow

5. Outline the features of IEEE 802.15.4.

1. It is a low-data rate wireless personal area network.
2. Low power consumption
3. Moderate average delays without too stringent delay guarantees,
4. Real-time suitability by reservation of Guaranteed Time Slots (GTS).
5. Collision avoidance through CSMA/CA.
6. Power management functions such as link speed/quality and energy detection.
7. Support for time and data rate sensitive applications]
8. IEEE 802.15.4-conformant devices may use one of three possible frequency bands
for operation (868/915/2450 MHz)

6. Define network security.

Network security is any activity designed to protect the usability and integrity of the
network and data. It includes both hardware and software technologies. It targets a
variety of threats. It stops them from entering or spreading on the network
7. List out the requirements of network security.
 Data Confidentiality – ensure that only authorized node can access the data
 Authentication - ensure that data is originated only from the correct node
 Data Integrity-ensure that no message can be altered by any unauthorised
person
 Data Freshness – Ensure no old message can be replayed
 Availability- Ensuring that service offered by whole WSN or by single sensor
node must be available whenever required.
  Self-Organization - Every node is independent having properties of adaptation
to the different situations and maintains self-organizing and self-healing
properties.
 Time synchronization -The wireless sensor network is a distributed system,
and in such distributed systems each node has its own clock and own time
domain However, a common scale among sensor nodes is important to
identify causal relationship between events in the physical world, and to
support the elimination of redundant sensor data
 Source Localization - Localization is the task of determining the physical
coordinates of sensor nodes (or a group of sensor nodes) or spatial relationship
among objects
 Scalability Data Confidentiality

8. Write the importance of data integrity in network security.

Data integrity refers to the accuracy and consistency of data stored in a database or a
data warehouse. Data integrity is the assurance that the data received by the destination is
the same as that generated by the source and has not been accidentally or maliciously
altered enroute. It is important as it guarantees and secures the searchability and
traceability of the data to its original source. Data Integrity in sensor network is critical
because the messages from source node to destination node must pass through
intermediate nodes.

9. Exhibit the different layer wise attacks in a sensor network.

Physical layer attack – Jamming, radio interference, Device tampering attack
Data link layer - Continuous Channel Access, Collision, Unfairness, Interrogation,
Sybil Attack
Network Layer attack - Blackhole attack, Warmhole attack, Byzantine attack, Link
Spoofed, Altered, or Replayed Routing Information, Misdirection, Information
disclosure, Resource consumption attack
Transport layer Attacks -Session hijacking, Flooding, De-synchronization Attacks,
Application layer Attacks-Repudiation(Denial of service), Overwhelm Attack, Deluge
(reprogram) Attack

10. List the different types of passive attacks

The listening and monitoring of communication channel by unauthorized invaders is
termed as passive attacks
Monitoring and Eavesdropping: Attacker can easily find out the communication by
snooping to data.
Traffic Analysis: Sensor communication activities can inherently disclose sufficient
information to allow an opponent to facilitate damage to the sensor network.
Camouflaged Adversaries : The attacker can compromise or hide desired number of
nodes in wireless sensor network
Packet-tracing : An equipped attacker may notify the position of immediate sender of
overheard packet in packet tracing attack. The Attacker is competent to implement
hop-by-hop tracing in the direction of the original data source, which becomes cause
of revealing the privacy of source.
 PART B
11. Explain how synchronization is maintained in S MAC protocol
In S MAC Each node maintains a schedule table. Schedulers are periodically
broadcasted to neighbors. S-MAC attempts to coordinate the schedules of neighboring
nodes such that their listen periods start at the same time. A node x’s listen period is
subdivided into three different phases:
the first part is reserved to the exchange of SYNC messages and
the second part allows the exchange handshaking mechanism (RTS/CTS) and
DATA packets.
To avoid packet collisions, S-MAC uses RTS/CTS

SYNC messages are sent during synchronization period A SYNC control packet is
exchanged between nodes during the listening period to establish synchronization
among the neighboring nodes, i.e. schedule exchanges are accomplished by periodic
SYNC packet broadcasts to immediate neighbors.

In the first phase (SYNCH phase), node x accepts SYNCH packets from its
neighbors. In these packets, the neighbors describe their own schedule and x stores
their schedule in a table (the schedule table). Node x’s SYNCH phase is subdivided
into time slots and x’s neighbors contend according to a CSMA scheme with
additional backoff, that is, each neighbor y wishing to transmit a SYNCH packet
picks one of the time slots randomly and starts to transmit if no signal was received in
 any of the previous slots. In the other case, y goes back into sleep mode and waits for
x’s next wakeup. In the other direction, since x knows a neighbor y’s schedule, x
can wake at appropriate times and send its own SYNCH packet to y (in broadcast
mode). It is not required that x broadcasts its schedule in every of y’s wakeup periods.
However, for reasons of time synchronization and to allow new nodes to learn their
local network topology, x should send SYNCH packets periodically. The according
period is called synchronization period.
• In the second phase (RTS phase), x listens for RTS packets from neighboring nodes.
In S-MAC, the RTS/CTS handshake described in Section 5.1.2 is used to reduce
collisions of data packets due to hidden-terminal situations. Again, interested
neighbors contend in this phase according to a CSMA scheme with additional
backoff.
• In the third phase (CTS phase), node x transmits a CTS packet if an RTS packet was
received in the previous phase. After this, the packet exchange continues, extending
into x’s nominal sleep time.

12. Explain energy efficiency in MAC WSN protocol book pg 119

 Energy problems on the MAC layer
 a nodes transceiver consumes a significant share of energy.
Energy consumption for Four modes
 Transmission are costly,
 Receiving about as expensive as transmitting
 Idling can be significantly cheaper but also about as expensive as
receiving, and
 sleeping costs almost nothing but results in a “deaf” node.
Energy problems
 Collisions – wasted effort when two packets collide
 Overhearing – waste effort in receiving a packet destined for
another node
 Idle listening – sitting idly and trying to receive when nobody is
sending
 Protocol overhead
Collision:
  Collisions occurs when two sensor nodes transmit their packets at the same
time. Retransmissions of the packets increase both energy consumption and
delivery latency
 It suffer
 Useless receive costs at the destination node,
 Useless transmit costs at the source node,
 Further energy consumption upon packet retransmission.
Hence, collisions should be avoided, either by design (fixed assignment/TDMA or
demand assignment protocols) or by appropriate collision avoidance/hidden-terminal
procedures in CSMA protocols
 Overhearing
 Overhearing occurs when a sensor node receives packets that are destined for other
nodes. Overhearing such packets results in unnecessary waste of energy and such
waste can be very large when traffic load is heavy and node density is high.
 Unicast frames have one source and one destination node.
 However, the wireless medium is a broadcast medium and all the source’s neighbors
that are in receive state hear a packet and drop it when it is not destined to them; these
nodes overhear the packet.
 For higher node densities overhearing avoidance can save significant amounts of
energy. On the other hand, overhearing is sometimes desirable,
 For example, when collecting neighborhood information or estimating the current
traffic load for management purposes.
 Protocol overhead
• A MAC protocol requires sending, receiving, and listening to a certain necessary
control packets, which also consumes energy not for data communication.
• Protocol overhead is induced by MAC-related control frames like,
• for example, RTS and CTS packets or request packets in demand assignment
protocols, and furthermore by per-packet overhead like packet headers and
trailers.
 Idle listening
 Sitting idly and trying to receive when nobody is sending, keep on listening
 The node will stay in an idle state for a long time, which results in a large amount of
energy waste. There are reports that idle listening consumes 50 – 100% of the energy
required for receiving data traffic
 This readiness is costly and useless in case of low network loads; for many radio
modems, the idle state still consumes significant energy.
 Switching off the transceiver is a solution; however, since mode changes also cost
energy, their frequency should be kept at “reasonable” levels. TDMA-based protocols
offer an implicit solution to this problem, since a node having assigned a time slot and
 exchanging (transmitting/receiving) data only during this slot can safely switch off its
transceiver in all other time slots.
Solution for energy problem
low complexity operation.
Sensor nodes shall be simple and cheap and cannot offer plentiful resources in terms
of processing power, memory, or energy.
Therefore, computationally expensive operations like complex scheduling algorithms
should be avoided.
The desire to use cheap node hardware includes components like oscillators and
clocks.
Consequently, the designer of MAC protocols should bear in mind that very tight time
synchronization (as needed for TDMA with small time slots) would require frequent
resynchronization of neighboring nodes, which can consume significant energy.
13. Explain the concept of PAMAS protocol
Page 132
 Contention based protocol
 It provides a detailed overhearing avoidance mechanism while it does not
consider the idle listening problem.
 The protocol combines the busy-tone solution and RTS/CTS handshake similar
to the MACA protocol.
 A distinctive feature of PAMAS is that it uses two channels:
 a data channel and a control channel. All the signaling packets (RTS, CTS, busy
tones) are transmitted on the control channel, while the data channel is reserved
for data packets.
 Procedure
 Node A transmits RTS on control channel, does not sense channel
 Node B receives RTS, sends CTS on control channel if it can receive and does
not know about ongoing transmissions
 B sends busy tone on the control channel as it starts to receive data - tells other
neighbors of the ongoing reception.
 Based on the durations specified in the RTS/CTS messages, the nodes can
deduce when to go silent.

Procedure
 Let us consider an idle node x to which a new packet destined to a neighboring
node y arrives.
 First, x sends an RTS packet on the control channel without doing any carrier
sensing.
 This packet carries both x’s and y’s MAC addresses.
  If y receives this packet, it answers with a CTS packet if y does not know of any
ongoing transmission in its vicinity.
 Upon receiving the CTS, x starts to transmit the packet to y on the data channel.
 When y starts to receive the data, it sends out a busy-tone packet on the control
channel.
 If x fails to receive a CTS packet within some time window, it enters the backoff
mode, where a binary exponential backoff scheme is used (i.e., the backoff time
is uniformly chosen from a time interval that is doubled after each failure to
receive a CTS).

RTS 78
X MAC address, Y MAC address
Busy Tone
X CTS Y
DATA

14. Assess the working principle of CSMA protocol used in 802.15.4 for medium access
in WSN with the help of state diagram
 A network that is idle for long times and starts to become active when triggered by an
important external event. ( temperature in an environmental monitoring application),
an event generation is indicated (i.e., fire alarm).)
 Upon the triggering event, all nodes wish to transmit simultaneously, potentially
creating lots of collisions.
 In the case that the nodes want to send their packets periodically, the danger of
collisions is repeated if no special measures are taken.
 The nodes are assumed to know an upstream neighbor to which they have to forward
packets destined for the sink. This upstream neighbor is also called the parent node.
 After a node gets a new packet for transmission from its upper layers, it starts with a
random delay and initializes its trial counter num retries with zero

State diagram ref PPT

15. Explain the LEACH routing with the help of neat diagram. Give its advantages and
disadvantages.
Ref page 133 and PPT
16. Identify the Key management schemes in Wireless Sensor Networks. Illustrate the
key distribution and management mechanism required for secure communication in
sensor networks.
Ref notes unit 4 Page 4.21

17. Examine the impacts of physical-layer jamming attacks on radio communication.

How it distorts the signals in the sensor network’s frequency band?
Jamming
This is one of the Denial of Service Attacks in which the adversary attempts to disrupt the
operation of the network by broadcasting a high-energy signal.
It consists in disturbing the radio channel by sending useless information on the frequency
band used. A jammer is an entity who is purposefully trying to interfere with the physical
transmission and reception of wireless communications
A jammer continuously emits RF signals to fill a wireless channel so that legitimate traffic
will be completely blocked
Common characteristics for all jamming attacks is that their communications are not
compliant with MAC protocols
This jamming can be temporary, intermittent or permanent
Jamming attacks in WSNs, classifying them as
constant Jammer (corrupts packets as they are transmitted) - Continuously emits a radio
signal, Sends out random bits to the channel, Does not follow any MAC layer etiquette, Does
not wait for the channel to become idle
Deceptive Jammer (sends a constant stream of bytes into the network to make it look like
legitimate traffic) - Constantly injects regular packets to the channel, Normal nodes will be
deceived by the packets, Normal nodes just check the preamble and remain silent, Hence
jammer can only send out preambles
Random Jammer (randomly alternates between sleep and jamming to save energy), -
Alternates between sleeping and jamming, After jamming for tj units of time, it turns off its
radio and enters the sleeping mode. After sleeping for ts units of time it will wake up and
resume jamming tj and ts may be random or fixed intervals taking energy conservation into
consideration. During wake up phase it can behave as a constant or a deceptive jammer
Reactive Jammer (transmits a jam signal when it senses traffic) - Not necessary to
block the channel when nobody is communicating, Jammer stays quiet when the
channel is idle, Jammer starts transmitting a radio signal as soon as it senses activity
on the channel, Does not conserve energy because the jammer’s radio must be
continuously on in order to sense the channel, However, it is harder to detect

To defense against this attack, spread-spectrum techniques for radio

Communication can be used. Handling jamming over the MAC layer requires
Admission Control Mechanisms.

18. Define Tampering attack. Describe how it recovers cryptographic

keys used for ciphering in sensor networks.
An attacker can damage or replace sensor and computation hardware and the program
codes or remove sensitive materials like cryptographic keys to allow unrestricted access
to higher levels of communication. Thereby these tampering nodes interfere in the
physical access of sensor nodes.

Countermeasures
 Some attacks in the physical layer are quite hard to cope with. For example, after
sensors are deployed in the field, it is difficult or infeasible to prevent every single sensor
from device tampering. Therefore, although there are some mechanisms that attempt to
reduce the occurrences of attacks, more of them focus on protecting information from
divulgence.
Encryption
 In general, cryptography is the all-purpose solution to achieve security goals in WSNs.
To protect data confidentiality, cryptography is indispensable.
 Cryptography can be applied to the data stored on sensors. Once data are encrypted,
even if the sensors are captured, it is difficult for the adversaries to obtain useful
information. A more costly encryption can yield higher strength, but it also drains the
limited precious energy faster and needs more memory. More often, cryptography is
applied to the data in transmission.
 There are basically two categories of cryptographic mechanisms: asymmetric and
symmetric. In asymmetric mechanisms (e.g. RSA), the keys used for encryption and
decryption are different, allowing for easier key distribution. It usually requires a third
trusted party called Certificate Authority (CA) to distribute and check certificates so that
the identity of the users using a certain key can be verified. However, due to the lack of a
priori trust relationship and infrastructure support, it is infeasible to have CAs in WSNs.
 Furthermore, asymmetric cryptography usually consumes more resources such as
computation and memory.