NetLogo User Community Models

(back to the NetLogo User Community Models)

Download If clicking does not initiate a download, try right clicking or control clicking and choosing "Save" or "Download".(The run link is disabled for this model because it was made in a version prior to NetLogo 6.0, which NetLogo Web requires.)

WHAT IS IT?

This application is a simulation of data dissemination flooding technique in wireless sensor network. Such a network is used to detect and report certain events across an expanse of a remote area - e.g., a battlefield sensor network that detects and reports troop movements. The idea behind this network is that it can be deployed simply by scattering sensor units across the area, e.g. by dropping them out of an airplane; the sensors should automatically activate, self-configure as a wireless network with a mesh topology, and determine how to send communications packets toward a data collector (e.g., a satellite uplink.) Thus, one important feature of such a network is that collected data packets are always traveling toward the data collector, and the network can therefore be modeled as a directed graph (and every two connected nodes can be identified as "upstream" and "downstream.")

A primary challenge of such a network is that all of the sensors operate on a finite energy supply, in the form of a battery. (These batteries can be rechargeable, e.g. by embedded solar panels, but the sensors still have a finite maximum power store.) Any node that loses power drops out of the communications network, and may end up partitioning the network (severing the communications link from upstream sensors toward the data collector.) Thus, the maximum useful lifetime of the network, at worst case, is the mnimum lifetime of any sensor.

HOW IT WORKS

1. Each node that receives a packet re-broadcasts it to all neighbors
2. The data packet is discarded when the maximum hop count is reached

CREDITS AND REFERENCES

Qasim Siddique
qasim_1987@hotmail.com

Self-Organization in Autonomous
Sensor/Actuator Networks
[SelfOrg]
Dr.-Ing. Falko Dressler
Computer Networks and Communication Systems
Department of Computer Sciences
University of Erlangen-Nürnberg
http://www7.informatik.uni-erlangen.de/~dressler/
dressler@informatik.uni-erlangen.de