Efficient Clustering for Improving Network Performance in Wireless Sensor Networks

Joint work with: Tal Anker, Danny Bickson and Danny Dolev

Bracha Hod

The Hebrew University of Jerusalem

Outline

Introduction
Related work

Motivation and main contribution

Belief Propagation (BP) Clustering using BP Simulation results Summary

Introduction

Cluster-based network is divided into subsets Each group of nodes contains a single leader (cluster head) and several ordinary nodes

Introduction

Clustering main objectives

Minimize the total transmission power aggregated over all nodes in the selected path Balance the load to prolong the network lifetime Increase network scalability Support data aggregation Reduce energy consumption Optimal cluster selection is a hard problem Cluster maintenance is essential

Clustering advantages

Clustering challenges

Related Work

Many research efforts

LEACH - Low Energy Adaptive Clustering Hierarchy (Heinzelman et al, 2002) HEED - Hybrid, Energy-Efficient, Distributed clustering (Younis et al, 2004) VCA - Voting-based Clustering Algorithm (Qin et al, 2005) EEUC - Energy-Efficient Unequal Clustering (Li et al, 2005)

Motivation

Network performance is important

Retransmission and dropped packets may waste energy Since the network is usually dense and several nodes are redundant, network lifetime should be measured by the time that the system is available for providing services

Main Contribution

We propose a novel approach based on Belief Propagation (BP)

Considers both local properties of a node and joint characteristics of a group of nodes Utilizes better the available information Incurs small constant overhead

Resulting in Better network performance Balanced power consumption among the nodes
Our scalable and practical implementation of BP can be used for other inference goals

Belief Propagation (BP)

BP is an iterative algorithm for computing maximum or marginal posterior probabilities by a local message passing BP is associated with rapid convergence, accurate results and good performance in asynchronous environment When performed on trees, BP converges to the correct values in a finite number of iterations

The Min-Sum Algorithm (MS)

The goal is to minimize the overall cost in the network, based on the local cost functions and the constraints between the nodes Each node transmits to its neighbors a message with its local and joint costs. Each neighbor updates its own belief accordingly and transmits the new belief Gradually the information is propagated through the network until the nodes converge to a common belief

Efficient Implementation

The Min-Sum variation of BP requires simple operations and works well with integer values

Saves floating-point calculation

Broadcast messages instead of the traditional unicast messages in BP

Preserves communication resources

The routing tree is used as the messagepassing tree

No special maintenance and overhead

Example

Network
80 7 85

A
6
100 8 83 4

Routing tree which used also as the messagepassing tree

A

C
4

D
B C D

151

Example

Round 1: Messages transmitted by all the nodes 80 A B C D E A

A 80 B7 C6 D8 B 85 A7 C5 E 65535 C 100 A6 B5 D4 E4 D 83 A8 C4 E 151 C4 B 65535 D 65535

85

100 4

8 4

83

E 151

Processing by node A:

A: A->A+B->A+C->A+D->A = 80+7+6+8 = 101 B: A->B+B->B+C->B+D->D = 7+85+5+83 = 180 If B is selected to be the cluster head, D selects itself

Example

Round 2: Messages transmitted by all the nodes 80 A B C D E A

A 101 B 180 C 115 D 180 B 92 A 87 C 11 E 65535 C 110 A 237 B 163 D 163 E 235 D 91 A 88 C 10 E 155 C 104 B 65535 D 65535

85

100 4

8 4

83

Processing by node A: A->A: 80 B->A: 87 80 = 7 C->A: 237 80 = 157 The message from E is propagated to A D->A: 88 80 = 8 Total cost: 80 + 7 + 157 + 8 = 252

E 151

Example

Round 3: Messages transmitted by all the nodes 80 A B C D E A

A 252 B 331 C 119 D 331 B 180 A 101 C 115 E 65535 C 119 A 252 B 331 D 331 E 252 D 180 A 101 C 115 E 235 C 110 B 65535 D 65535

85

100 4

8 4

83

After round 3, all the nodes converge to a common belief node C should be the cluster head A B C D E
A 252 B 331 C 119 D 331 B 331 A 252 C 119 E 65535 C 119 A 252 B 331 D 331 E 252 D 331 A 252 C 119 E 252 C 119 B 65535 D 65535

E 151

Clustering using MS

Two events trigger a clustering process

A regular node does not have a cluster head Periodically by each cluster head to balance the power 1-hop vicinity for localized and distributed process Complete asynchronous operation Number of rounds is bounded and determines apriory to avoid impact of the environment

Message passing properties

Clustering using MS

Every message contains

Self cost of being a cluster head Cost of connecting to other cluster heads Final state decision (on last round) Self cost is based on the expected energy consumption in a period and the residual battery power

Cost metric

The expected energy consumption considers degree and distance from the base station

Joint cost is based on link quality and the residual battery power

Simulation Model

Simulation in TOSSIM, TinyOS simulator 250 nodes including a single base station Link Estimation and Parent Selection routing protocol

Shortest path metric combined with link quality

Surge application for data aggregation Power information of Berkeley Mica2 mote Variable power levels for cluster heads and regular nodes

HEED

Cluster heads are selected with a probability based on their residual energy
When there are no cluster heads announcements, a node selects itself with the probability it has or alternatively doubles its probability for the next round Local and efficient method which achieves very good results on simulations

Performance Evaluation

Data collection time

Clustering using BP achieves more than 40% higher throughput than HEED

Performance Evaluation

Data collection rate during the network lifetime

Clustering with BP achieves better routing, deployment and stability

Performance Evaluation

BP has better deployment and network stability than HEED

Average hop count

Re-clustering processes

Performance Evaluation

Clustering Overhead

Network Lifetime

BP suffers from more overhead because larger size of messages

HEED has very small advantage because using BP more packets are transmitted

Summary

We present a new framework for clustering based on BP This approach is fully distributed, localized, asynchronous, robust and scalable Utilization of all available information and not only subset of parameters yields better results and better network performance Future work

Comparing the BP algorithm with the theoretical optimal clustering algorithm

Thank You!

Appendix Notations of BP

nodes

- set of possible states of node i - local distribution function of node i - joint function of two connected i and j - unicast message from node i to node j at round t about the state that node j should be - broadcast message from node i to its direct neighbors N(i)

MS Formulation

Message passing Message update rule Belief calculation

Efficient implementation in sensors by broadcast messages and integer calculations only