Wireless In-Building Communication
Using an Array of Microdevices
J-M. Dilhac, D. Dragomirescu.
LAAS-CNRS
7 avenue du colonel Roche, 31077 Toulouse CEDEX 4, FRANCE
Abstract- In this paper a new concept is proposed for routing
communications between two terminals through a low level
protocol utilizing a network of periodically deployed microdevices
acting as autonomous nodes, without any supervising entity.
Nodes are neither primary sources of information nor routers.
They basically act as repeaters with very limited processing
power. On-demand routing does not require frames: the
communication protocol works at the symbol level. In a first step,
to perform route discovery, the minimum propagation time
between terminals is measured. Then, the nodes situated along
the corresponding shortest route are activated. Finally,
information is exchanged using a full-duplex scheme.
I. INTRODUCTION
The emergence of microelectromechanical systems
(MEMS) incorporating communication components has
created enriched opportunities to design innovative systems for
information transmission. Cubic-millimeter MEMS are
considered for deploying a massively (i.e. hundreds to
thousands dust motes) distributed sensor network, as in the
University of California, Berkeley 's Smart Dust project [1].
Advances in microelectronics provide increasing
functionalities in smaller sizes, considering sensing, signal
processing, communications and energy management.
However, in that kind of application, MEMS rely on a
central station to send and receive data: either there is a direct
communication between an entire field of MEMS to a base
station, or alternatively a multihop network is formed to allow
sensor information to propagate to a central collecting point
[2]. In that last case, intermediate nodes assist distant nodes to
reach the central station. In these applications, MEMS
incorporate a sensor, and the purpose of the network is to
collect information about the environment and to propagate it
back to the collecting point, with some in-network processing
such as aggregation or compression [3]. It is there basically a
wireless sensor network (even if most of the time, sensor
nodes will not have originating traffic to send), which does not
support one or several independent point-to-point flows, while
in our application, the microsystems act as repeaters.
The purpose of our paper is therefore to present a different
and innovative networking strategy using distributed
microdevice nodes. The goal of this strategy is to allow two
terminals to communicate using microdevices as nodes of a
maintenance-free, fault-tolerant network together with a low-
level transmission protocol. The objective is to identify and
create a minimum-length path of transmission, therefore
avoiding delay-spread associated with multipath propagation,
while node functionality and overhead are kept minimum.
Indeed, a microdevice network is not a classic data network
exhibiting boundless capacity and processing power. Such a
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microdevice network consists of numerous, simple, low-cost
and highly unreliable components and interconnections. As a
result, it possesses very limited processing and energy
capabilities together with high failure rates. Considering the
above, there are strong similarities with computing and
networking using electronic textiles [4].
Consequently, new networking procedures, innovative
Medium Access Control (MAC) and unusual transmission
protocol, differing strongly from what is found in conventional
computer network, are needed.
This paper is organized as follows. Section II describes the
MEMS network while section III outlines our proposed MAC
and communication protocol. Section IV considers some
preliminary issues related to our protocol performances.
In the following, we mostly ignore hardware
implementation issues, even if we mention a few practical
aspects. Our work focuses on the MAC and transmission
control aspects only.
II. PHYSICAL DESCRIPTION
A. Network topology
The medium of transmission considered in this paper (see
Fig. 1) is a two-dimensional (2-D) interconnection pattern, i.e.
a surface periodically paved with microdevices acting as
autonomous (both with respect to energy and the absence of a
supervising entity) nodes, thus assembled into a meshed
multihop topology. This pattern, absent faults, does not
change. This 2-D structure, possibly flexible (but all nodes are
still spaced exactly d apart) may therefore be embedded in
three-dimensional (3-D) space. Consequently, this network is
different from a sensor network, like the one described in
section I, where the nodes are randomly distributed.
The network surface may be of any size and pattern, either
fully paved by microdevices or with missing nodes at given
positions thus corresponding in practice to physical obstacles.
Missing nodes may also correspond either to nodes in idle state
for energy purposes or to some broken nodes or
interconnections.
Nodes may be considered as low-cost simple components,
that is silicon-based microsystems or even nanosystems. As
already said, nodes and communication links may be failure
prone giving either permanent or transient (when failure is
related to power management) faults.
In the next decades, non-silicon technologies (nano,
molecular, polymers…) may be of interest with the added
advantage of allowing the processing of filament-type batteries
mixed with the wire lines [5].
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 The traffic will propagate through the network over several
hops, with limited intermediate processing, to larger-
processing nodes called "terminals" (see Fig. 1). As explained
below, the nodes act basically as repeaters at the symbol level:
they ignore, when used by the terminals, a possible frame
structure. The reason is that, to avoid the drawbacks associated
with complex information processing algorithms, such as
power consumption, processing time, increased device size, we
need to devise a scheme with which the task performed by a
node is as simple as possible. Moreover, the nodes are not to
be reprogrammed after being deployed even if the network
topology is modified.
d
x energy-unconstrained terminals considered in this paper may
d be temporarily plugged anywhere within the network.
Figure 1: example of a communication network formed by microdevices
(diamonds). The distance between closest neighbours is d. Two terminals
(crosses) are shown (see text). The connectivity space of microdevice labelled
x is shown.
The nodes could communicate using wireless means.
Radiofrequency and optical communications could be
considered. As previously stressed, it is not our purpose to
consider in details the issues associated with the practical
implementation. However, as will be explained in the next
paragraph, a node is supposed to communicate only with its
closest neighbours. Collimated optical beams might therefore
be the solution of interest. Moreover, nodes being periodically
arranged, the network primary application is probably
associated with an in-building environment, the microdevices
being incorporated into the fabric: floors, ceilings, walls...
Alternatively, the nodes could be connected by electrically
isolated wires twisted with yarns used in woven fabrics, that is
one of the interconnection methods used for electronic textiles
[4]. It is worth mentioning that this alternative is much more
power efficient than wireless communication found in sensor
networks [6].
B. Node functionality
The nodes constitute the infrastructure allowing the
terminals to communicate. The bidirectional, full duplex
connectivity between nodes is static: a node can only
communicate with its nearest neighbours at distance d, thus (in
the example of Fig. 1) at most four nodes if all are present. The
connectivity space is therefore a circle, radius of which is
slightly larger than d (see Fig. 1). In other words, the nodes
have anisotropic emission/reception features and an unbroken
line-of-sight is required between a node and its neighbour to
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permit communication. The consequence is a multipath-free
communication at the microscopic level.
The nodes are capable of receiving and processing at most
four simultaneous communications, and able to distinguish
between the originating locations. They can simultaneously
emit up to four different messages in the four directions.
However, a node has no a priori knowledge of the network and
will continue ignoring its position within this network. More
precisely, it initially does not know which of its neighbours is
or are closer to a given terminal. Moreover nodes have neither
physical nor logical address.
Nodes are neither primary sources of information nor routers.
A node is silent until a broadcast transmission activates it.
They can be regarded as automata, each one being associated
with its own clock.
They are more or less acting as repeaters with very limited
processing power and very little buffering capability. In the
following, they will be referred to as microrepeaters.
C. Terminals
The terminals are the primary sources of information. The
However their positions must not change during a
communication phase. Moreover, these positions must
correspond to a node the functionality of which is then
replaced by that of the terminal. However, like the
microrepeaters, the terminals ignore both their own positions
within the network, and initially its location with respect to the
other terminal(s). Therefore, messages cannot be addressed by
location. Nevertheless, terminals may possess a logical
address. In the following, we will consider only two terminals,
labelled A and B.
III. COMMUNICATION PROTOCOL
A. Introduction
We describe here the transmission control scheme we
propose. It is very different from what is found in sensor
networks [3] where each node is both source and router, and
where routing tables and frames (packets) are used.
Nevertheless, the network nodes collaborate as a whole to
deliver observations leading to robustness to the loss of
individual nodes.
Our low-level communication protocol works at the
symbol level. We assume that an alphabet consisting of eight
symbols is available. In a preliminary work [7], we used an
alphabet size which was proportional to the network extent:
this was obviously a strongly limiting factor, no more
impeding the improved protocol version presented here.
The establishment of a communication channel goes
through three steps, the first two steps corresponding to on-
demand route discovery:
- calculation of the shortest path length through the
measurement of the minimum propagation time T,
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- activation of the microrepeaters along this path,
- information transfer by exchange of time series data.
The communication ends up by a reset phase.
However, before describing this procedure, more details
need to be given about network synchronization.
B. Node to node communication and network synchronization
When a symbol is transmitted, either from a terminal, or
from a microrepeater to the nearest neighbours, the
corresponding information propagation time is labelled τ.
More precisely, τ is the time interval between the reception of
one (or the simultaneous reception of up to four) symbol(s) by
a microrepeater, and the reception of the (or the simulataneous
reception of up to four) reemitted symbol(s) by the (up to four)
neighbours of the initial microrepeater.
However, while being referred to as microrepeaters for
simplicity, basic information processing is done by the nodes
as the (re) emitted symbols may be different from the received
ones. Assuming that symbols could be (re)emitted after some
processing time tp which may vary with the task complexity (to
keep the propagation time τ constant) the microrepeater must
restrain from transmitting from time of reception t to time t + tp
+ TIMEGUARD with
tp + TIMEGUARD + tT = τ (1)
with tT being the true physical propagation time of symbols
between two nodes at a distance d from each other. As d is a
constant, tT is independent of the node positions.
TIMEGUARD is updated after the completion of the local
information processing. A similar process applies to the
terminals to determine the time interval between emissions
(see Fig. 4 in section III.c).
It is worth mentioning that the practical application of (1)
necessitates accurate time interval measurements at the node
and terminal levels but, in return, this will result in
simultaneous emissions from all the active
microrepeaters/terminals and therefore, as seen below, in
network global synchronization.
In the following of this paper, for the sake of simplicity,
instantaneous processing (tp=TIMEGUARD=0) and therefore
instantaneous reemission are assumed, consequently tT = τ•
This does not reflect reality.
C. Communication protocol
Let us consider that terminal A needs to communicate with
terminal B. In a first step, A and B determine the length of the
shortest path between them. For that purpose, three symbols
labelled M1, M2 and M3 will be used. At the beginning of a
round, terminal A sends a broadcast symbol M1 to all nodes.
Another broadcast symbol labelled M2 is emitted by B in
response to the reception of the first received M1 symbol. This
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last symbol has followed the shortest path as it exhibits the
minimum delay. Then, a last broadcast symbol labelled M3 is
emitted by A in response to the reception of the first received
M2 symbol. The protocol is summarized in Fig. 2 and 3 at the
terminal and microrepeater levels respectively.
(terminal A) (terminal B)
start start
M1 no
M1 ?
no yes
M2 ?
M2
yes
M3 no
M3 ?
yes
Figure 2: partial representation of transmission protocol of Mx symbols for
terminals. Emissions are identical in all directions.
stands for emission and for reception.
As can be seen from Fig. 3, a microrepeater (including
sender) will emit a given Mx symbol towars all neighbours,
but only once. This has two effects: first the Mx symbols will
"diffuse" isotropically (through multiple hops) from the
emitting terminal or repeater. In other words, it is broadcasted
to all of the microrepeaters. Second, in networks exhibiting
complex topologies, these symbols will not travel permanently
in the network: they will only propagate to the network limits
and then disappear.
For a given Mx series, the first symbol received by a
terminal has followed the shortest path between the two
terminals. Other identical symbols, following longer paths,
may be received with various delays. However, the
measurement by A of the time interval between the emission
of M1 and the reception of the first M2 corresponds to twice the
minimum propagation time (i.e. 2T) between A and B.
Similarly, the measurement by B of the time interval
between the emission of M2 and the reception of the first M3
corresponds again to twice the same minimum propagation
time. At this stage, the minimum propagation time T may be
calculated by A and B. T is related to the number N of
microrepeaters involved in the shortest path by (2):
T = τ (N+1). (2)
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 start
no
M1 ?
yes
M1
no
M2 ?
yes
M2
no
M3 ?
yes
M3
Figure 3: basic transmission protocol of M symbols for microrepeaters.
Emissions are identical in all directions.
Once 2T has been measured, N can therefore be calculated
using (2). This equation illustrates a key point of the protocol
that is the relationship between propagation time and distance,
and therefore between propagation time and number of
microrepeaters involved. This is of course a consequence of
the periodical structure of the meshed network.
The next task for terminals A and B is to "activate" the N
microrepeaters participating to the propagation along this
shortest route. It is worth noting that this path may not be
unique, i.e. that more than N nodes may be involved.
However, if more several routes do exist, all have the same
length and consequently even if multipath propagation takes
place there is no delay–spread and time series data from
different paths are synchronised at the receiver end.
To activate the N microrepeaters, a new set of symbols is
used; these symbols are labelled E0 and E1. The transmission
protocol relative to these two symbols for a microrepeater is
straightforward: a given Ex symbol is retransmitted by a
microrepeater only if its reception has been followed by that of
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an identical symbol (i.e. same x) after a delay τ. More simply,
the last symbol of a stream of identical symbols is not
reemitted. Moreover, retransmission is not done towards the
neighbours having initially transmitted the above symbols to
the considered microrepeater. Finally, during this phase, each
microrepeater will only "listen" to its neighbours having
transmitted the very first Ex symbol of all streams. This rule is
essential in the case of networks exhibiting isolated obstacles.
Compared to Mx broadcast symbols, the fundamental
property of Ex symbols is that they propagate from a terminal
over a limited distance only; this distance depends upon the
length of the stream of Ex symbols initially emitted by a
terminal. This is illustrated in Fig. 4 for two streams of 5 and 4
symbols respectively. The use of two symbols (E0 and E1)
permits to emit adjacent frames, without idle time intervalls
between them (see Fig. 4).
The following results from this procedure:
th
- to reach the n repeater, a stream of n symbols is needed,
th
- the time interval Tp to reach the n repeater is given by
Tp = (2n-1) τ. (3)
To activate the microrepeaters, the terminals will
synchronously emit streams of Ex symbols by pair, alternating
streams of E0 and E1, each last symbol of a stream propagating
along a fraction of the shortest path only. The sum of the
propagation distances of a pair will be equal to the spatial
shortest path (T/τ).d, that is (N+1).d according to (2). To
th
activate the n repeater, the lengths of the two streams will be
respectively n and (N-n+1). Fig. 4 illustrates the activation of a
microrepeater at distance 4d of a terminal.
N stream pairs are necessary to activate the N repeaters
involved. The condition of self-activation of a node is that at
any time during this phase, the node will simultaneously
receive at least two (it may receive at most four) identical Ex
symbols.
The fastest procedure consists in starting Ex emission
immediately after terminal B received the first M3 symbol. B
will therefore emit the N streams one after another. Terminal
A will emit the N streams with a delay Γ after the emission of
M 3.
The last phase deals with the exchange of time series data
between A and B. This is now true information, no more
related to the establishment of the transmission link. Our
proposed transmission control scheme is as follows. A third set
of symbols, labelled D, is used. At this stage, emitted symbols
are marked for the previously selected microrepeaters only; all
other nodes discard them. More precisely, the selected nodes
will receive and repeat these symbols, while their closest
neighbours will received the symbols but not repeat them, and
the other nodes will not even receive the D symbols: a
multipath-free channel is then established at the physical
network level, with the added advantage of corresponding to
the shortest route therefore reducing minimizing total
propagation time.
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 rectangular mesh represented in Fig. 1 is probably not the
terminal microrepeaters optimum solution considering multiple propagations and
1 2 3 4 5 therefore unnecessary activations. A honeycomb pattern is
probably more efficient. This performance assesment is part of
0 the future work considered by the authors.
1 Another obvious issue is related with the ability of the
protocol to support many independent point-to-point flows, i.e.
2 to allow nodes to handle multiple path discoveries
simultaneously, therefore allowing fair bandwidth allocation.
3 Provided that synchronization is maintained during the totality
4 of the communication (that is the three phases plus the reset
step) two or more simultaneously active channels may coexist
5 and use the same microrepeaters on condition that
6 communications have been initiated at instants t0 and t'0 with t0
• t'0 ± nτ, n being an integer. This shift in time would allow the
7 repeaters to discriminate between different traffics.
8 More complex functions (i.e. point to multipoint
communication, terminal identification, terminal
9 supervision...) are out of the scope of this paper as they are
related to higher-level network functions.
10
11 V. CONCLUSION
12
In this paper, a methodology for routing communications
13 between two terminals has been proposed. This methodology
is also designed to save power in the network nodes first by
minimizing the amount of microrepeaters needed for
time (τ) establishing a link between two terminals (therefore saving the
energy of those nodes not required for the communication
Figure 4: partial chronograms for the emission/reception of E1 (black squares)
and E0 (open square) symbols. Instantaneous processing takes place (tp=0). canal), then by minimizing computational load at the node
Microrepeaters are at distances d, 2d, 3d… from terminal. Labels of the level (nodes can be regarded as elementary automata), and
vertical axis correspond to an emission when standing on right, and to a finally by eliminating the need for direct coordination between
reception when on left. The microrepeater at distance 4d from terminal is
nodes. This is also achieved by relying upon the large
activated at times 12 τ. Only one terminal is shown.
computing and energetic power available in the terminal units.
Moreover, the above protocol exhibits high fault tolerance.
If on-off-keying encoding is used, only two symbols D0 and The hardware of the network discussed in this paper is very
D1 may be used. A node receiving a D symbol from one or different from that of a classical data network because the
more neighbour nodes repeats it to its other neighbours. As nodes have very limited processing and storage capabilities
stated in section II.B, for a network topology as that of Fig. 1, together with small energetic budgets. Consequently, classic
a microrepeater may have to process up to four simultaneously techniques including those used in Wireless Local Area
incoming symbols, and may need to emit simultaneously up to Networks and Personal Area Networks for routing
four symbols. This property is used during this last phase to communications and for dealing with congestion and link
permit full-duplex transmission. failure, are not appropriate.
To end up the communication, terminal A broadcasts a On the other hand, while our network share strong
reset symbol, which propagation is that of a Mx symbol: after similarities together with sensor networks (limited power,
completion of the propagation, all nodes are back in an storage and processing) and ad hoc networks (multi-hop
identical state, ready for a new sequence as the one depicted in propagation of information) strong differences (possible wired
Fig. 3. A and B may now be plugged in new positions. channels, fixed topological location of nodes) make it distinct.
This reset procedure could also occur in the presence of Looking ahead, following questions are to be explored:
increasingly rampant intermittent (or total) failures to remap - what are the performances of the above algorithms
communication process. with respect to energy efficiency, latency...
- is it possible to adapt the above algorithms to
IV. PERFORMANCES microrepeaters randomly distributed.

While the above protocol needs to be tested vs. various

network geometries, it is worth mentioning that the hardware
itself, i.e. the mesh structure, also needs optimization. The

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 ACKNOWLEDGMENT

The authors would like to thank J. Collet for all the

discussions related to this work.

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