416 IEEE TRANSACTIONS ON INDUSTRIAL INFORMATICS, VOL. 6, NO.
3, AUGUST 2010
Comparative Study of Energy-Efficient Sampling
Approaches for Wireless Control Networks
Joern Ploennigs, Member, IEEE, Volodymyr Vasyutynskyy, and Klaus Kabitzsch, Member, IEEE
Invited Paper
Abstract—Wireless sensor and control networks are attrac-
tive for many embedded system applications mainly because
they don’t need wired connections for communication or energy
supply. Therefore, energy efficiency is an elementary requirement
of devices and concerns not only the hardware and commu-
nication protocols, but also the device applications. Adaptive
sampling approaches promise to reduce the energy consumption
of applications by adapting sampling and message transmissions.
Selecting appropriate approaches and parameters is challenging
as it strongly influences their performance. Therefore, this paper
compares several adaptive sampling approaches in different re-
alistic closed control loop scenarios from building automation, to
develop a guideline for approach selection and parameterization.
Index Terms—Adaptive sampling, building automation, energy-
efficiency, wireless sensor networks.
I. INTRODUCTION
IRELESS sensor and control networks (WSNs) have
W several benefits over wired solutions, such as ease
of deployment, small size, and improved flexibility. This has
made them attractive for many embedded systems applications
including environmental and habitat monitoring, healthcare,
traffic control, and industrial automation [1], [2].
Thanks to the significant research of the last years, WSNs
can fulfill the requirements of theses domains. Energy-efficient
hardware and operating systems [3], [4] permit a runtime of
several years. Developed communication protocols [5]–[7] take
advantage of these mechanisms satisfying runtime and real-time
requirements. Further, energy-harvesting approaches provide a
maintenance-free alternative to batteries.
Nevertheless, practical experience often shows a different
picture. For example, the demonstrator of the Irish ITOBO
project [8] with about 100 wireless sensors (Telos rev B and
Tyndall nodes) requires that about one device’s battery needs to
be changed per day. An EnOcean sensor with a solar cell does
Manuscript received October 30, 2009; revised March 26, 2010; accepted
May 19, 2010. Date of publication June 14, 2010; date of current version
August 06, 2010. This work originates in the context of the Research Project
AUDRAGA (promotional reference 01BN0908), supported by the German
Federal Ministry of Education and Research (BMBF) due to a decision of the
German Parliament. Paper no. TII-09-10-0283.
The authors are with the Department for Computer Science, Dresden
University of Technology, D-01062 Dresden, Germany (e-mail: Joern.
Ploennigs@tu-dresden.de).
Digital Object Identifier 10.1109/TII.2010.2051812
1551-3203/$26.00 © 2010 IEEE
Authorized licensed use limited to: CENTRO FED DE EDUCACAO TECNOLOGICA DE MINAS GERAIS. Downloaded on June 10,2024 at 22:32:06 UTC from IEEE Xplore. Restrictions apply.
not need a battery and has a life time in total dark of up to 90 h,
but only if it has been fully charged after several days of op-
timal light conditions, which renders the placement of device in
good illumination conditions to a common problem [9]. Thus,
while node hardware continuously shrinks in size, batteries and
energy-harvesting modules stay large and prevent small form
factor devices as long as the devices’ power consumption is not
reduced.
Further, energy efficiency and reaction latency create a
tradeoff [1], [10] with practically relevant compromises not
easy to reach. WSN devices save energy by deactivating parts
of their hardware (sleep modes) and try to spend as much
time as possible in a deep sleep mode, in which only a timer
ensures the wake-up. Thus, a device with long sleep intervals
has low energy consumption but long latency. The optimum of
this tradeoff is mainly defined by the processing and commu-
nication requirements of individual devices and the protocols
coordinating their communication.
This tradeoff has been often addressed on network layer op-
timizing MAC, routing, and topology control [5]–[7]. Beside
this, it is the device application that finally defines the practical
energy consumption of the device. As a result, common im-
plementation approaches from wired devices cannot be simply
transferred to WSNs as they do not consider sleep modes. For
example, if a system integrator implements an illumination sam-
pling periodically with a 100 ms interval and transmits all mes-
sages as it is usually done in wired networks, the device battery
will scarcely last longer than a few days. Two general design
principles should be used for WSN applications: first, allow the
node to sleep as often and long as possible and second, process
information locally, as processing consumes significantly less
power than transmitting [1], [11].
This can be realized by adaptive sampling approaches which
transmit samples only if necessary and, thus, require less en-
ergy. They are generally easy to implement and decide locally
for each sample, if it is transmitted. So, there is no communica-
tion or control overhead with other devices. Adaptive sampling
approaches are known since the 1960s [12], but their practical
value for energy efficiency is still discussed. Previous studies
for WSNs like [13], [14] compared the arrival rate of single ap-
proaches to periodic sampling in open loops for simple signals,
like a step response. A recent study by Pawlowski et al. [15] ex-
amines the applicability of several approaches to a greenhouse
control scenario under fixed parameterizations. However, ap-
proach’s parameters have strong influence on their performance
and need to be considered for any comparison. Further, simple
 PLOENNIGS et al.: COMPARATIVE STUDY OF ENERGY-EFFICIENT SAMPLING APPROACHES FOR WIRELESS CONTROL NETWORKS
control loops do not represent practical systems with measure-
ment noise, disturbances, and transmission losses [16], [17].
Thus, the results give mostly hints about the performance of ap-
proaches, but allow no general comparison.
This paper compares several adaptive sampling approaches
based on practical scenarios from home and building automation
systems. This is a particular market where wireless monitoring
and control systems are gaining momentum, primarily due to the
easy installation without wiring. WSNs support flexible room
usage scenarios, where walls can be flexible moved to adjust to
new layouts. Devices can be installed where no wire can be used
like on fashionable glass walls or in historic monuments. This
addresses the most important scenario, namely, the retrofitting
of building automation to existing buildings. This market covers
already most contracts today and will further grow, as building
automation permits energy management in times of high priced
energy.
However, building automation is quite conservative like any
automation domain and not very experimental with new tech-
nologies, as the systems have to work reliable for 10 to 30 years
with a warranty by the system integrators. Hence, WSNs have
to fulfill existing requirements of this domain, such as a reli-
able message transmission and real-time requirements down to
100 milliseconds for illumination or ventilation control. On the
other hand, requested battery lifetime starts at five years [18],
[19] to reduce maintenance effort, rendering energy efficiency
an important task.
Purpose of this paper is to investigate in the performance
of sampling approaches in terms of energy consumption and
quality-of-control under various parameterizations to give prac-
titioners hints on the selection of appropriate sampling methods
and parameters. Therefore, practical scenarios are assumed
with simple system design, simple implementation of sampling
and control algorithms, and realistic plant and disturbance
models. The scenarios and simulators used for experiments
are introduced in Section III. The sampling approaches are
introduced in Section II and their performance results are
discussed in Section IV. Section V concludes the comparison
with advises for approach selection and parameterization.
II. ADAPTIVE SAMPLING APPROACHES
The basic idea of most adaptive sampling approaches is to
transmit samples only if they are of significance for the receiver,
which is decided on base of a signal criterion. Energy saving
potential arises from the fact that waking-up, sampling, and de-
cision making costs only a small part of the energy needed for
transmitting a single sample. Transmission energy saved when
the signal does not changes significantly can be therefore used
to support smaller sampling periods to react faster on signal
changes and improve sampling and control quality. The adap-
tive sampling algorithms are compared in this paper against
common periodic sampling that samples a continuous signal
with a constant sampling period . This results in a time
series of samples at times , with sample
index . As each sample is transmitted, the transmitted value
equals with . Gradient-based integral sampling uses the integral sampling
Send-on-delta sampling (SoD, also called absolute deadband)
is the most common adaptive sampling approach. It is often used
in building automation [20], [21] to save network bandwidth. It
Authorized licensed use limited to: CENTRO FED DE EDUCACAO TECNOLOGICA DE MINAS GERAIS. Downloaded on June 10,2024 at 22:32:06 UTC from IEEE Xplore. Restrictions apply.
417
has also been suggested for wireless networks [13], [14] and
is commonly used as default sampling approach in EnOcean’s
wireless STM sensor nodes. Basically, send-on-delta samples
the signal with a fixed period like periodic sampling, but
transmits messages only if the sampled value differs more
than a given to the last transmitted value with .
This transmission is often limited by a min-send-time and
max-send-time , specifying the minimum and maximum in-
tersampling intervals respectively . The
min-send-time prevents babbling-idiot problems if the sensor
has for example a loose contact, while the max-send-time pro-
vides heartbeat (alive) messages. Summarizing, a message is
sent if the following condition evaluates true after sampling the
value at time and if the last message was sent with at
time :
(1)
with the conditions for the min-send-time
and max-send-time . These conditions are
also used in the next sampling criteria.
Integral sampling sends a message, if the integral absolute
error of sampling is larger than a limit , which re-
sults in a bounded sampling error in contrast to send-on-delta
sampling [22]. The is the integral of the absolute dif-
ference between the sampled value and the last transmitted
value , usually estimated via the trapezoidal rule. A min- and
max-send-time can be applied as well, leading to the condition
(2)
Predictor-based sampling extends send-on-delta or integral
sampling with a predictor. The predictor is used by the receiver
to extrapolate the signal progression since the last message until
it receives a new value. The sensor uses the same predictor to
send messages only if the predicted value significantly differs
from the sampled one using either a send-on-delta criteria
(3)
or the integral absolute error of estimation between predicted
and sampled values
(4)
The predictor bases either on a specific plant model of the
system, or on a simplified model that, for example, linearly
extrapolates the signal gradient [23]. The downside of the
first approach is that plant models are often unknown and
may change over time. In the latter one, the predictor needs
to transmit at least two samples to update the gradient in the
receiver and, therefore, has slightly increased message size and
energy consumption.
condition (2) to decide about a transmission, but additionally al-
lows to adapt the sampling periods to adjust the energy con-
sumption of wake-ups. The next wake-up time for each period is
 418
estimated depending on the actual gradient (slope) of the signal
[24], [25]. To avoid that the sampling gets stacked in an infinite
if the signal gradient is zero, a max-sleep-time defines
the maximum sampling periods. Gradient-based sampling also
allows to wake-up between estimated times to correct the gra-
dient, which is parameterized by a step-factor defining the
number of wake-ups in .
III. COMPARISON SCENARIO
A. Simulation Model
Usage scenarios of WSN in automation can basically be dis-
tinguished in monitoring and control scenarios. In a monitoring
scenario the signal is sampled for logging purpose and offline
evaluation. Real-time requirements are usually nonexisting. It
is only important that the signal can be correctly restored later
and, therefore, fulfils the Nyquist–Shannon sampling theorem.
Adaptive sampling approaches allow efficient sampling in this
case. But, also the collection of several samples and trans-
mission in one message improves energy efficiency [3], [26].
A combination of both is the usage of adaptive sampling for
compression.
If the sensor is used in a control scenario, then additional
real-time requirements exist. Delays, jitter, message losses and
the sampling period influence the quality-of-control [27], [28].
As adaptive sampling results in irregular samples, it has sig-
nificant influence on control loop performance as discussed in
Section IV-A. This paper investigates in the more challenging
control scenario. This simplifies also the comparison of the
sampling approaches besides their prominent energy-efficiency
as the quality-of-control reflects quite clearly how the require-
ments of the control loop are met.
For the comparison, two scenarios from building automation
were investigated that have diverse properties and cover various
practical aspects. Scenario TMP (temperature control) deals
generally with a slow changing control process of the room air
temperature. Heating and cooling requires time, and the fastest
disturbances influencing the temperature are air movements
created by ventilators or air conditioners. In contrast, Scenario
ILL (illumination control) considers a very fast process. If
the light is switched or if the sun eclipses behind a cloud,
the illumination changes nearly instantly. The scenarios are
individually introduced in Sections IV and V.
The scenarios are evaluated by simulations as only they
allow the necessary long term evaluations of the approaches
under various parameterizations. The simulation uses a realistic
model of a single room that is highly automated with temper-
ature control, light control, electric sun blinds, and ventilation
controlling the air quality. To optimize energy consumption of
the room, temperature and light control depend on the presence
of persons, which is simulated during business hours. This
adds many realistic disturbances to the control scenarios from
changing weather to people behavior up to influences of other
controls. This provides an environment for the closed control
loops that can be assumed realistic. The simulation model
was verified against the common building simulation software
TRNSYS [29].
Each simulation in the later comparison covers a full Cen-
tral European year of 365 days with a fixed simulation step size
Authorized licensed use limited to: CENTRO FED DE EDUCACAO TECNOLOGICA DE MINAS GERAIS. Downloaded on June 10,2024 at 22:32:06 UTC from IEEE Xplore. Restrictions apply.
IEEE TRANSACTIONS ON INDUSTRIAL INFORMATICS, VOL. 6, NO. 3, AUGUST 2010
Fig. 1. Simplified block diagrams of the simulated control scenarios. (a) Sce-
nario TMP of a temperature control loop. (b) Scenario ILL of a illumination
control loop.
of 1 s for the temperature control Scenario TMP and 100 ms
for the illumination control Scenario ILL. The disturbance pro-
cesses (sun, people, ventilation, etc.) are identical for each sim-
ulation for comparability. Hence, variations in system behavior
between simulation runs are always a result of the sampling ap-
proaches. The sampled value is handled as double float value in
the simulation, while quantization influences of analog-digital
converters are ignored.
To simplify the comparison of integral and send-on-delta
sampling, the parameters and are set in a way that both
create the same sampling rate under ideal conditions. Assuming
the value changes exactly by in one time step and the
signal progresses monotonously between samples, then the
integral sampling also creates a message, if the estimated error
equals . Hence, . In all
adaptive sampling experiments a max-send-time of 60 min and
10 min is used for Scenarios TMP and ILL, respectively.
The max-sleep-time is set to and the step-factor
is set to 2 in the experiments meaning one wake-up between
samples, which are not further than apart.
B. Scenario TMP: Room Air Temperature Control
If a person is present, the room is either heated or cooled to
22 C, otherwise the set-point of radiators is set to 18 C and to
24 C at the cooling ceiling. To prevent that heating and cooling
are activated at the same time if the temperature oscillates, the
modus is switched with a hysteresis of 1 C. Hence, if a person
is present and the current mode is heating, the room temperature
has to pass 23 C to activate the cooling.
Slow disturbances are induced by the heat exchange with the
outside and with neighboring rooms over windows and walls.
Heat exchange with the outside is intensified if the ventilation
is activated. Incoming sunlight and person’s body heat influence
the temperature too.
Fig. 1 shows the simplified block model of the closed con-
trol loops. Strongly simplified, the control value of the valve
 PLOENNIGS et al.: COMPARATIVE STUDY OF ENERGY-EFFICIENT SAMPLING APPROACHES FOR WIRELESS CONTROL NETWORKS
opening at radiator and cooling ceiling influences the temper-
ature via a second-order time-delay element with dynamic pa-
rameters. Large delay times of the heating and cooling process
make the system hard to control, especially with variable sam-
pling intervals. Two PID controls are used, since they are most
widespread in industry. Observer-based controllers cope better
with adaptive sampling [30], but are less typical due to more
complex parameterization including often unknown or varying
plant models. The integral parts of both PID controllers are lim-
ited to prevent a windup of the integral and to make the process
controllable. This is a necessary adjustment to adaptive sam-
pling as otherwise the irregular samples result in large integral
errors in the controller (see Section IV-A or [31]). The con-
trollers are called each simulation step and have a zero-order
hold on input side that use always the last received sample value
for computing the control value.
C. Scenario ILL: Room Illumination Control
The constant light control is set to 500 lx office illumination if
a person is present, otherwise the light is switched off. The only
disturbance is the natural sun light passing windows and sun
blinds. On a bright summer day the direct outdoor illumination
reaches values of 120000 lx. The sun blinds are down then and
block most of the direct light and only about 10% reaches the
room as diffuse light in this example. Hence, artificial light is
usually off on a bright summer day, while the light control has
to react often on a cloudy winter day when sensor values change
often. In contrast, sensor values do not change at all for long
periods during night, when the light level is too low to be sensed.
Simplified, the illumination is directly influenced by the dim
value of the lamp by a proportional behavior without any delay
[Fig. 1(b)]. This instant behavior makes it necessary to con-
trol the illumination with an I-controller, which successively
increases the dim value until the required value of 500 lx is
reached. The integral part also defines the time delay of the
system and, therefore, the acceptable delay of the network. Both
would need to be parameterized quite sensible to avoid jitter-tol-
erant, but slow rising responses or jitter-intolerant control loops
that windup fast. This makes the illumination hard to control
over a network in general and particularly with adaptive sam-
pling. Nevertheless, the sensibility to the jitter can be removed
in this case to provide a better quality-of-control. Therefore, the
controller is executed only when new messages arrive or the
set-point changes and the controller accumulates the absolute
control error only instead of integrating it. Hence, the controller
successively changes the dim value depending on the set-point
difference independently of the time passed. This is a common
adaptation in building automation.
D. Comparison Criteria
Relevant for the comparison of adaptive sampling approaches
in wireless networks is their tradeoff between energy consump-
tion and sampling error. A higher sampling and transmission
rate, created by a smaller sampling period and delta , leads
to a lower sampling error for a monotonic changing continuous
process, but requires more energy.
In control scenarios the sampling error directly influences the
quality-of-control, which provides a better quality measurement
than the abstract sampling error. A common measurement for
Authorized licensed use limited to: CENTRO FED DE EDUCACAO TECNOLOGICA DE MINAS GERAIS. Downloaded on June 10,2024 at 22:32:06 UTC from IEEE Xplore. Restrictions apply.
419
quality-of-control or the control loop performance is the rela-
tive integral absolute error of control that integrates the
difference between the set-point value and the continuous
process value (in the sensor) relatively over the simulated
time via
(5)
The is computed in this paper only during the time the
controllers are activated, i.e., if people are present in the room
and, in case of the illumination, if the incoming natural light is
lower than the set-point. In that way, only periods relevant for
the control are considered.
Average draw current of the sensor node is used to compare
the average consumption of approaches. It is estimated from the
energy model of a Telos rev B node presented in [3] based on
the number of wake-ups and number of sent messages
at the sensor. In this model, one wake-up for sampling
needs approximately 9 for the temperature and 12.2
for the illumination. The transmission of one message usually
costs the sensor node 227 and 265 for predictor-based
sampling as it uses longer messages. These costs include the
increased current required by higher sleep modes for sampling
and transmission. The node draws further 9 in deep sleep
mode LPM3 which is not counted in the results as it is inde-
pendent of the sampling. The current drain of all actions is nor-
malized over the simulated time and, therefore, equals the
average current in amperes a node draws additionally to LPM3
mode. To be independent of any specific MAC approach, the
energy model considers only the energy cost of the sensor for a
single-hop transmission and ignores the overhead required for
synchronizing the receiver and sender wake-up times [5]–[7].
The Telos rev B supports a supply voltage from 2.1–3.6 V and is
usually powered by two AA batteries. Thus, the average power
consumption in Watt can be estimated by a factor 3 from the
given average draw current.
Robustness to transmission errors is another important mea-
surement, as wireless communication are error prone and easily
disturbed by other wireless networks, electromagnetic sources,
moving people, or objects [16], [17]. Therefore, it is important
to analyze the robustness of the sampling approaches to an unre-
liable communication—especially in case of adaptive sampling,
because fewer transmitted messages also mean fewer samplings
that can correct eventually lost ones.
The analysis uses a Gilbert–Elliot error model that emulates
the error behavior of wireless networks quite good as these
have time-varying and sometimes high error rates [16], [17],
[32]. The Gilbert–Elliot model is a Hidden-Markov model that
switches between two error states with different loss proba-
bility, while staying in each state an exponential distributed
time [32]. In the experiments, each state is in mean 60 s long
and the packet loss probability of the first state is .
The loss probability of the second state is varied in the
experiments between 0% to 100%. These parameters represent
measurements made in industrial environments [16], [17].
Robustness to measurement noise is a relevant requirement
on controls as all measurements carry small noises added by the
process disturbances or sensor hardware. This may require a fil-
tering of the sampled signal. In case of slow periodic controls,
 420
Fig. 2. Step response of send-on-delta sampling with typical phenomena.
the noise is often tolerated due to large sampling periods. How-
ever, in case of adaptive sampling, noise may trigger the trans-
mission condition unnecessarily and result in higher power con-
sumption. In the experiments, a white random Gaussian noise
is added to the real sampling value with a variable standard
deviation .
Robustness to transmission delays is a common issue in net-
work-based controls as transmission delays and their jitter add
random dead times to the control loops [27]. Transmission de-
lays are usually below 100 milliseconds in wired networks [33],
but can be larger in wireless networks due to message caching
in multihop transmissions if hops have different sleep cycles.
Transmission delays are critical for the control if they are in
the range of the control times. The transmission delays are ran-
domly drawn for each message in the simulation following a
negative exponential distribution with a mean value .
IV. RESULTS
A. Event-Based Sampling and Control
Adaptive sampling results in some new phenomena in closed
control loops that are not common to periodic controls [31]. To
illustrate the differences, a worst-case step response of a closed
control loop with send-on-delta sampling is compared with that
from a periodic loop in Fig. 2.
At first, adaptive sampling results in irregular samples that
impede the analytical analysis of event-based controls since
the common control theory considers periodic samples. Also,
common PID control algorithms presume periodic samples and
show the following phenomena in their step responses if used
with adaptive sampling.
Approximation errors are created by the controller whenever
it has to estimate the correct process value from the last trans-
mitted one. The controller often use zero-order holds to extrap-
olate the last signal, or in case of predictor-based sampling the
signal gradient. Both leads to approximation errors in the in-
tegral and derivative parts of the controller, resulting, e.g., in
overshoots when using them. For that reason, the PID control
should be adapted to irregular samples, e.g., by limiting the in-
tegral part.
Event triggering and timing relates to the execution of the
control algorithms. It makes a big difference, if the controller is
Authorized licensed use limited to: CENTRO FED DE EDUCACAO TECNOLOGICA DE MINAS GERAIS. Downloaded on June 10,2024 at 22:32:06 UTC from IEEE Xplore. Restrictions apply.
IEEE TRANSACTIONS ON INDUSTRIAL INFORMATICS, VOL. 6, NO. 3, AUGUST 2010
executed periodically or event-based on the arrival of new sam-
ples or set-point changes. First, it allows for different estima-
tions of the integral and differential parts and, therefore, influ-
ences approximation errors. Fig. 2 shows also an example of
an event-based control that literally gets stuck on its maximum,
as the controller waits for an update from the sensor that is not
created as the process value does not change without the con-
troller. In combination with an integral windup, the system may
get stuck on a high overshoot. Therefore, it is advised to call the
controller periodically.
Limit Cycles happen due to the quantization errors created
by the transmission of only samples with a “significant” dif-
ference, which presents a sort of nonlinearity [34]. Limit cycles
are small-magnitude oscillations of the process value around the
set-point in steady state, which add unnecessary messages and
reduce battery lifetime. Limit cycles are typical for all adaptive
sampling approaches presented in this paper. Their magnitude is
defined by the sampling type and the threshold value . Usually
the max-send-time is not small enough to prevent limit cycles.
Control approaches like [31] can eliminate them partly, but re-
quire a special PID implementation.
These phenomena are influenced by the parameters of the
adaptive sampling and control algorithms and occur in all fol-
lowing experiments.
B. Periodic Sampling
All adaptive sampling approaches are compared against pe-
riodic sampling in Figs. 3 and 4. The figures show the average
draw current over the relative integral absolute error of control
in the simulated year.
In case of periodic sampling, the only way to save energy is to
increase the sampling period and to reduce the control quality
simultaneously. The sampling period was increased from 1 s
(upper left point) to 300 s (lower right) for the room temperature
control Scenario TMP in Fig. 3(a)–(d). For a sampling period
below 60 s, the integral error rises only slightly. Beyond
60 s, the integral error rises exponentially as the closed loop
starts oscillating.
Fig. 4(a)–(d) show an identical behavior for the illumina-
tion control Scenario ILL. The is quite constant for a
sampling period below 10 s and rises above this value. Due
to the changed controller the loop never starts oscillating in
these cases, but the settling times increase drastically. With a
sample period of 1 s, the illumination sensor requires 248
for wake-up, sampling and sending each sample. Sampling with
10 s requires 13% of this power (33 ) with nearly identical
. The power falls to 11 for a sampling period of 90
s. Thus, the sampling period influences directly proportional the
and inversely proportional the power consumption cre-
ating the typical tradeoff for all sampling approaches in Figs. 3
and 4.
The sampling period can be parameterized with the
Nyquist–Shannon sampling theorem. It says that a bandlimited
signal with maximal frequency needs to be sampled at least
with a frequency to be restored to the original signal.
In control loops, it is usually necessary to work with frequen-
cies 6–20 times of the system frequency of the loop due to
approximation errors that are inserted by the analog-to-digital
 PLOENNIGS et al.: COMPARATIVE STUDY OF ENERGY-EFFICIENT SAMPLING APPROACHES FOR WIRELESS CONTROL NETWORKS 421

Fig. 3. Results in temperature Scenario TMP: (a)–(d) tradeoff draw current I /control error IAE ; (e)–(h) sensibility for T , T = 90 s and  = 0:25 C;
( =12
(a) send-on-delta; (b) integral sampling  ) ( =12
= T ; (c) predictor-based  ) ( =12
= T ; (d) gradient-based  = T ); (e) IAE sensibility to
 
noise; (f) I sensibility to noise; (g) IAE sensibility to msg. losses; (h) I sensibility to msg. losses.

Fig. 4. Results in illumination Scenario ILL: (a)–(d) tradeoff draw current I /control error IAE ; (e)–(h) sensibility for T , T = 10 s and  = 5 lx;
( =12
(a) send-on-delta; (b) integral sampling  ) ( =12
= T ; (c) predictor-based  ) ( =12
= T ; (d) gradient-based  = T ); (e) IAE sensibility to
 
noise; (f) I sensibility to noise; (g) IAE sensibility to msg. losses; (h) I sensibility to msg. losses.

conversion. These considerations are also valid for adaptive parison as the control loop reacts at these points quite quickly
sampling approaches, augmented with the fact that these ap- to the influence of noise and losses. Figs. 3(e)–(h) and 4(e)–(h)
proaches introduce further quantization errors [30]. show the sensitivity of the and for all sampling ap-
The robustness of the sampling approaches is evaluated with a proaches for increasing noise and loss probability . In gen-
fixed sampling period next to the inflection point of the tradeoff, eral, periodic sampling is least sensitive in terms of to
which is at ca. 90 s and ca. 10 s for Scenarios TMP and ILL, noise and packet loss, because the high number of messages
respectively. These parameters were chosen for an easier com- allows a fast recovery from both. It is notable that even under
Authorized licensed use limited to: CENTRO FED DE EDUCACAO TECNOLOGICA DE MINAS GERAIS. Downloaded on June 10,2024 at 22:32:06 UTC from IEEE Xplore. Restrictions apply.
 422
Fig. 5. IAE sensibility to delays (I sensibility is insignificant). (a) Scenario
TMP (T , T =1sand  = 0 25
: C). (b) Scenario ILL (T , T
and  = 5 lx
).
complete packet loss for ca. 60 s, the in-
creases only slightly for periodic sampling. As discussed above
in real application it is advised to use a sampling frequency 6–20
times higher than the Nyquist frequency. Then, all sampling ap-
proaches are less sensitive and differences become smaller.
Periodic sampling shows in Fig. 5(b) the worst response
to network delays larger than 2 s for the illumination control
Scenario ILL. The reason does not lie within the delays itself, as
the modified PID controller is robust to them, which is visible
for integral sampling in the same figure. Instead, the many
messages created by periodic sampling are scrambled by the
delay’s jitter for large and are not received in correct order.
This adds noise at the controller’s input that is directly boosted
in the proportional loop. Therefore, jitter is a known issue in
periodic network-based controls [27]. In case of Scenario TMP,
the same jitter issue has no significant influence on the . error in contrast to send-on-delta sampling, which limits the ab-
In this case, the noise resulting from the jitter is completely
filtered by the plant due to the strong delay behavior between
heating and room temperature.
C. Send-on-Delta Sampling
In wired networks with send-on-delta sampling, it is common
to sample the value in sensor as often as possible and limit the
minimum inter-transmission interval with the min-send-time
to avoid babbling-idiot problems with broken or noisy sensors.
In WSNs, the sampling period should already be as large as
possible to minimize wake-up’s energy consumption and, thus,
the min-send-time can be ignored. The constraints laid by
the Nyquist–Shannon sampling theorem on periodic sampling
apply to both times and .
Figs. 3(a) and 4(a) show the relationships of power consump-
tion and for send-on-delta sampling. It is visible that
the power consumption is significantly lower than for periodic
sampling. With a delta of 0.02 C the power consumption falls
by 99%, 83%, and 57% in case of a 1 s, 90 s, and 300 s sam-
pling period for Scenario TMP. Increasing the after exceeding
some critical value has no more significant influence on the
power consumption. The reason is that the absolute gradient of
the signals is usually negative exponential distributed and most
changes are rather small than large [21]. For example, the tem-
perature changes in mean only 7.89 with a maximum
of 0.027 . Hence, the delta is often larger and can save many
Authorized licensed use limited to: CENTRO FED DE EDUCACAO TECNOLOGICA DE MINAS GERAIS. Downloaded on June 10,2024 at 22:32:06 UTC from IEEE Xplore. Restrictions apply.
IEEE TRANSACTIONS ON INDUSTRIAL INFORMATICS, VOL. 6, NO. 3, AUGUST 2010
messages. The same behavior can be observed for the illumina-
tion Scenario ILL in Fig. 4(a) where 65%, 40%, and 10% of the
power is saved for 0.1 s, 10 s, and 90 s sampling period with a
delta of 0.1 lx.
It is also visible that an increased has significant influence
on the integral absolute error . The reasons are the phe-
nomena introduced in Section IV-A and particularly the depen-
dence of the magnitude of limit cycles on .
The great benefit of send-on-delta sampling is its robustness
to noise. The quantization defined by enables it to filter noise
smaller than delta. This has mainly influence on the power con-
sumption as seen in Figs. 3(f) and 4(f), which is least affected
= 01s: and in most cases the lowest. The of send-on-delta is
in general the largest of all approaches with the used parame-
terization, but the difference gets smaller with increased noise
as more messages are triggered (Figs. 3(e) and 4(e)). The ro-
bustness to losses of send-on-delta is comparable to integral and
gradient-based sampling, as the relative difference of the
stays the same [Figs. 3(g) and 4(g)] and the power consumption
is not influenced [Figs. 3(h) and 4(h)]. Send-on-delta sampling
shows a good behavior in presence of network delays. Jitter has
less influence in case of the illumination control Scenario ILL
because the sequence of messages is not scrambled thanks to
their reduced amount. In both control cases, the increases
slightly for large with the jitter problem.
Therefore, it is advised to set the delta in case of send-on-
delta sampling rather small because of limit cycles, but larger
than the mean noise magnitude.
D. Integral Sampling
Integral sampling tries to limit the integral absolute sampling
solute error. Therefore, the quantization errors and the limit cy-
cles are not so distinctively related to threshold as in case of
send-on-delta sampling. Figs. 3(b) and 4(b) prove this and the
is in general lower and does not so dramatically increase
with a larger delta especially for small sampling times .
However, the usage of the integral absolute sampling error as
transmission criteria increases the sensitivity of integral sam-
pling to noise. This mainly influences again the power con-
sumption in Figs. 3(f) and 4(f) as small disturbances quickly
add up and trigger more messages. Network delays also have
less influence on integral sampling due to the reduced amount
of messages.
E. Predictor-Based Sampling
Figs. 3(c) and 4(c) show the tradeoffs for predictor-based in-
tegral sampling with a first-order predictor, which uses the gra-
dient of the last transmitted sample to extrapolate the signal after
the last sample. Particularly, for very small deltas and sampling
times this results in the smallest over the lowest power
consumption of all approaches [ C and
in Fig. 3(c) and also for and
in Fig. 4(f)]. On the other hand, predictor-based sampling also
provokes the highest and power ratings for larger deltas
and sampling times in the temperature control Scenario TMP. In
case of the illumination control Scenario ILL, with its fast dis-
turbances, the predictor-based integral sampling behaves even
 PLOENNIGS et al.: COMPARATIVE STUDY OF ENERGY-EFFICIENT SAMPLING APPROACHES FOR WIRELESS CONTROL NETWORKS
nearly identical to a predictor-based send-on-delta sampling1
with its increased dependency of the on .
Reason is that the predictor works fine as long as it is updated
often, which requires a small sampling time and delta. Oth-
erwise, incorrect predictions increase the control error signifi-
cantly. Further, the rarely produced messages carry more valu-
able information, rendering their loss more critical. This makes
predictor-based sampling particularly sensitive to losses as doc-
umented in Figs. 3(g) and 4(g). But, also noise has a strong in-
fluence on the and power consumption as it directly adds
to the prediction error.
These pro and cons are prevalent in Fig. 5(a) where pre-
dictor-based sampling with send-on-delta and integral criteria
shows the worst and best response to network delay respec-
tively. On the one hand, the predictor is basically able to com-
pensate network delays and does this correctly in case of the
integral criteria. This results in a minimum number of messages
and, thus, jitter influence. On the other hand, predictor-based
sampling is very sensitive to jitter as it results in incorrect mes-
sage order and incorrect prediction models at the controller. This
is the reason for the bad behavior of the illumination control and
the temperature control with send-on-delta criteria. To summa-
rize, predictor-based sampling has a high potential for a very
good behavior, but shows this only in a narrow band of param-
eters adapted to a specific case.
F. Gradient-Based Integral Sampling
The downside of the sampling approaches so far is the lim-
itation of the sampling interval to . If this sampling interval
is set large relatively to the Nyquist frequency, the control loop
quickly becomes oscillating. If it is set small, it requires many
wake-ups increasing the power consumption. Gradient-based
integral sampling flexibly adapts the sampling interval based
on the signal gradient. This allows for small intervals in case of
state changes of the control loop, as well as for large intervals
in the steady state to save energy.
Gradient-based integral sampling uses the integral criteria to
decide about message transmissions. Thus, it has in Fig. 3(d)
the same reduced dependence on the delta as integral sampling.
The is even lower than for periodic sampling, especially
for large max-sleep-times and small deltas as the real sam-
pling interval is then lower in mean. For the same reason, the
power consumption of gradient-based sampling is higher for the
same compared with the other adaptive approaches,
especially as the used step-factor results in additional
wake-ups in-between.
Gradient-based sampling is least sensitive to losses of the
adaptive approaches, as any oscillations in control loop that re-
sult from them can be faster corrected by adaptively increasing
sampling rates. This can be seen as a slight power increase
in Fig. 3(h), while the stays quite low in Fig. 3(g). As
gradient-based sampling uses the gradient, it is sensitive to
noise. This mainly results in an increased power consumption,
which rises in worst case even higher than periodic sampling
[Fig. 3(f)]. However, the higher number of messages also results
1This is not shown in individual figures as both are nearly identical in Scenario
ILL and the relation between Fig. 4(a) and (c) applies to Scenario TMP.
Authorized licensed use limited to: CENTRO FED DE EDUCACAO TECNOLOGICA DE MINAS GERAIS. Downloaded on June 10,2024 at 22:32:06 UTC from IEEE Xplore. Restrictions apply.
423
TABLE I
DECISION MATRIX WSN SAMPLING APPROACHES (CRITERIA RATING:
YY—MOST IMPORTANT, EXCLUSIVE CRITERIA; Y—IMPORTANT;
O—LESS IMPORTANT; N—UNIMPORTANT)
in the lowest rise of the over the noise. It increases also
the sensitivity of gradient-based sampling to jitter in Fig. 5.
V. CONCLUSION AND ADVICES
All result figures showed that quality-of-control (in terms of
the ) and power consumption create individual tradeoffs
for all approaches that depends on their parameterization.
Therefore, no favorite sampling approach can be named for
wireless sensor and control networks. Each approach has
its own strength and weaknesses that need to be considered
depending on the application scenario.
Table I summaries the guidelines that result from the per-
formed experiments. Depending on the relevance of the inves-
tigated criteria an adequate sampling approach can be selected
for a specific scenario. If for example the quality-of-control is
the most important criteria (yy—rating), because a critical, fast
control loop is run over the wireless network, than periodic sam-
pling should be used regardless of any energy considerations.
Send-on-delta’s ability to filter noise renders it the best approach
to handle noisy signals. The lowest energy consumption can be
reached with predictor-based send-on-delta sampling, but only
if the signal is slow changing, free of noise and the algorithms
is perfectly parameterized. In all other cases integral and gra-
dient-based sampling provide good all-round solutions, where
particularly the latter is quite robust to parameterizations.
The two scenarios were selected to cover a broad range of
system properties. Scenario TMP examines a slow process with
large dead times, while Scenario ILL considers a fast process
without dead times. Both scenarios use common adaptations of
simple PID controllers and are affected by realistic disturbances.
The authors assume that the presented tradeoff behaviors and the
resulting guidelines do also apply to many other control sce-
narios as other studies showed comparable results [15]. How-
ever, generalizability cannot be proven and especially controls
with a known sensibility to network influences should be exam-
ined by similar simulations.
About the parameterization of the approaches can be said that
the sampling period should be set 6–20 times smaller than
the Nyquist frequency. Gradient-based sampling can handle a
higher max-sleep-time , but it also defines a maximum reac-
tion times that needs to be considered.
The delta for all adaptive sampling approaches should not be
set too large as this will not save significantly more energy. The
main constraint is defined by the limit cycles. If the control can
tolerate oscillations up to a magnitude of in steady state, this
 424
is a reasonable value. The delta for integral conditions can be
set adequately using: . “Communication systems for building automation and control,” Proc.
Min-send-times should only be used in case of gradient-
based sampling to limit the maximum sampling frequency, re-
spectively, to 6–20 times of the Nyquist frequency. Max-send-
times allow for heartbeat messages that are helpful in many
occasions. However, if they are not required by any receiver,
should be as large as possible (up to infinite) to save transmis-
sion energy.
In general, adaptive sampling approaches can save about 80%
of the device energy when compared to periodic sampling. This
requires a good cross-layer design in which the adaptive sam-
pling is complemented with an adequate MAC approach that is
able to take benefit of flexible sampling and transmission times
[5]–[7] and that does not waste the energy saved by adaptive
sampling with large periodic or aperiodic synchronization over-
head. As sampling is the most relevant application of energy-ef-
ficient WSN, adaptive sampling approaches open up a large po-
tential to save energy and allows longer lifetimes, smaller de-
vices, and new applications like wireless control.
REFERENCES
[1] A. Willig, “Recent and emerging topics in wireless industrial commu-
nications: A selection,” IEEE Trans. Ind. Informat., vol. 4, no. 2, pp.
102–124, 2008.
[2] I. F. Akyildiz, Y. S. W. Su, and E. Cayirci, “Wireless sensor networks:
A survey,” Computer Networks, vol. 38, no. 4, pp. 393–422, Mar. 2002.
[3] K. Klues, V. Handziski, C. Lu, A. Wolisz, D. Culler, D. Gay, and P.
Levis, “Integrating concurrency control and energy management in de-
vice drivers,” in Proc. 21th ACM SIGOPS Symp. Operating Syst. Prin-
ciples, New York, 2007, pp. 251–264.
[4] J. Polastre, R. Szewczyk, and D. Culler, “Telos: Enabling ultra-low
power wireless research,” in Proc. 21th Int. Symp. Inf. Process. Sensor
Netw., Apr. 15, 2005, pp. 364–369.
[5] K. Langendoen, Medium Access Control in Wireless Sensor Net-
works. Commack, NY: Nova Science Publishers, 2007, pp. 535–560.
[6] G. Anastasi, M. Conti, M. D. Francesco, and A. Passarella, “Energy
conservation in wireless sensor networks: A survey,” Ad Hoc Networks,
vol. 7, no. 3, pp. 537–568, 2009.
[7] J. Ploennigs, V. Vasyutynskyy, and K. Kabitzsch, Ultra-Low Power
Wireless Communication, J. D. Irwin and B. M. Wilamowski, Eds. :
IEEE Press, 2009, to be published.
[8] A. Ahmed, K. Menzel, J. Ploennigs, and B. Cahill, “Aspects of multi-
dimensional building performance data management,” in Proc. 16th
Annu. Workshop of the Eu. Group for Intell. Comput. Eng., Berlin, Ger-
many, Jun. 2009, pp. 487–494.
[9] EnOcean, “Indoor lighting conditions—Placement of solar powered
sensor units.” 2008, Tech. Rep. AN201.
[10] N. Aakvaag, M. Mathiesen, and G. Thonet, “Timing and power issues
in wireless sensor networks—An industrial test case,” in Proc. 34th Int.
Conf. Parallel Process., 2005, pp. 419–426.
[11] V. Raghunathan, C. Schurgers, S. Park, and M. B. Srivastava, “Energy-
aware wireless microsensor networks,” IEEE Signal Process. Mag.,
vol. 19, no. 2, pp. 40–50, 2002.
[12] J. M. Smith, “An evaluation of adaptive sampling,” IEEE Trans. Autom.
Control, vol. 16, no. 3, pp. 282–284, Jun. 1971.
[13] M. Neugebauer and K. Kabitzsch, “A new protocol for a low power
sensor network,” in Proc. 23rd IEEE Int. Perf. Comput. Commun.
Conf., Phoenix, AZ, Apr. 15–17, 2004, pp. 393–399.
[14] M. Miskowicz, “Send-on-delta concept: An event-based data reporting
strategy,” Sensors, vol. 6, no. 1, pp. 49–63, 2006.
[15] A. Pawlowski, J. L. Guzmán, F. Rodrìguez, M. Berenguel, J. Sánchez,
and S. Dormido, “The influence of event-based sampling techniques
on data transmission and control performance,” in Proc. 15th IEEE Int.
Conf. Emerging Technol. Factory Autom., Mallorca, Spain, Sep. 2009.
[16] A. Willig, M. Kubisch, C. Hoene, and A. Wolisz, “Measurements of a
wireless link in an industrial environment using an IEEE 802.11-com-
pliant physical layer,” IEEE Trans. Ind. Electron., vol. 43, no. 6, pp.
1265–1282, 2002.
[17] A. Willig, K. Matheus, and A. Wolisz, “Wireless technology in indus-
trial networks,” Proc. IEEE, vol. 93, pp. 1130–1151, Jun. 2005.
Authorized licensed use limited to: CENTRO FED DE EDUCACAO TECNOLOGICA DE MINAS GERAIS. Downloaded on June 10,2024 at 22:32:06 UTC from IEEE Xplore. Restrictions apply.
IEEE TRANSACTIONS ON INDUSTRIAL INFORMATICS, VOL. 6, NO. 3, AUGUST 2010
[18] W. Kastner, G. Neugschwandtner, S. Soucek, and H. M. Newman,
IEEE, vol. 93, pp. 1178–1203, 2005.
[19] C. Reinisch, W. Kastner, G. Neugschwandtner, and W. Granzer, “Wire-
less technologies in home and building automation,” in Proc. 5th IEEE
Int. Conf. Ind. Informat., Jul. 23–27, 2007, vol. 1, pp. 93–98.
[20] K. Kabitzsch, J. Naake, S. Theiss, and V. Vasyutynskyy, “Unter-
suchung zum Fernzugriff auf Automatisierungstechnik,” Atp—Au-
tomatisierungstechnische Praxis, vol. 7, no. 48, Aug. 2006.
[21] J. Ploennigs, P. Buchholz, M. Neugebauer, and K. Kabitzsch, “Au-
tomated modeling and analysis of CSMA type access-schemes for
building automation networks,” IEEE Trans. Ind. Informat., vol. 2, no.
2, pp. 103–111, May 2006.
[22] M. Miskowicz, “Sampling of signals in energy domain,” in Proc. 10th
IEEE Int. Conf. Emerging Technol. Factory Autom., Catana, Italy, Sep.
19–20, 2005, vol. 1, pp. 263–266.
[23] Y. S. Suh, “Send-on-delta sensor data transmission with a linear pre-
dictor,” Sensors, vol. 7, pp. 537–547, Apr. 2007.
[24] J. Ploennigs, V. Vasyutynskyy, M. Neugebauer, and K. Kabitzsch,
“Poster abstract: Gradient-based integral sampling for WSNs in
building automation,” in Proc. 6th Eu. Conf. Wireless Sensor Netw.,
Feb. 2009.
[25] J. Ploennigs, V. Vasyutynskyy, and K. Kabitzsch, “Comparison of
energy-efficient sampling methods for WSNs in building automation
scenarios,” in Proc. 15th IEEE Int. Conf. Emerging Technol. Factory
Autom., Mallorca, Spain, Sep. 2009.
[26] G. Mathur, P. Desnoyers, D. Ganesan, and P. Shenoy, “Ultra-low power
data storage for sensor networks,” in Proc. 5th Int. Conf. Inf. Process.
Sensor Networks, New York, 2006, pp. 374–381.
[27] S. Soucek and T. Sauter, “Quality of service concerns in IP-based con-
trol systems,” IEEE Trans. Ind. Electron., vol. 51, no. 9, pp. 1249–1258,
2004.
[28] F.-L. Lian, “Analysis, design, modeling, and control of networked con-
trol systems,” Ph.D., Univ. of Michigan, Ann Arbor, MI, 2001.
[29] TRNSYS 16—A TRaNsient SYstem Simulation Program, Solar En-
ergy Laboratory, Univ. of Wisconsin-Madison, 2004.
[30] F.-L. Lian, J. Yook, D. M. Tilbury, and J. R. Moyne, “Network architec-
ture and communication modules for guaranteeing acceptable control
and communication performance for networked multi-agent systems,”
IEEE Trans. Ind. Informat., vol. 2, no. 1, pp. 12–24, Feb. 2006.
[31] V. Vasyutynskyy and K. Kabitzsch, “Simple PID control algorithm
adapted to deadband sampling,” in Proc. 12th IEEE Int. Conf.
Emerging Technol. Factory Autom., Sep. 25–28, 2007, pp. 932–940.
[32] A. Willig, “Scheduling multiple streams with (m,k)-firm deadlines
having different importance over Markovian channels,” in Proc. 10th
IEEE Int. Conf. Emerging Technol. Factory Autom., Catania, Italy,
Sep. 19–22, 2005, pp. 79–85.
[33] J. Ploennigs, M. Neugebauer, and K. Kabitzsch, “Diagnosis and con-
sulting for control network performance engineering of CSMA-based
networks,” IEEE Trans. Ind. Informat., vol. 4, no. 2, pp. 71–79, May
2008.
[34] A. V. Peterchev and S. R. Sanders, “Quantization resolution and limit
cycling in digitally controlled PWM converters,” IEEE Trans. Power
Electron., vol. 18, pp. 301–308, Jan. 2003.
Joern Ploennigs (M’06) received the Diploma degree in electrical engineering
and the Ph.D. degree from the Dresden University of Technology, Dresden, Ger-
many, in 2001 and 2007, respectively.
He was a Feodor-Lynen Fellow, awarded by the Humboldt-Foundation, at the
Strategic Research Cluster ITOBO at University College Cork, Ireland, in 2009.
He is currently head of a research group in the area of automated design tools
for wireless building automation systems.
Volodymyr Vasyutynskyy received the Diploma degree in software technology
in 2003 and the Ph.D. degree in 2009, both from the Dresden University of
Technology, Dresden, Germany.
He is leading a research group in the field of analysis and diagnosis ap-
proaches for complex automation systems including networked control systems.
Klaus Kabitzsch (M’05) received the Diploma and Ph.D. degree (1982) in elec-
trical engineering and communications technology from the Ilmenau Technical
University, Ilmenau, Germany.
He is a Full Professor and Head of the Department of Technical Computer
Sciences since 1993 and founded the Fieldbus Competence Center, Dresden, in
1995, and cofounded the SAP Ubiquitous Computing Laboratory in 2004.