U-2010

Current Work at UCL

The majority of work done as part of this project in the UCL Network Research Group is in the general area of Wireless Sensor Networks (WSN). Specific focus is on sensor network gateways, and on the design, deployment and management of large distributed IPv6-based sensor network testbeds and the mobility requirements of both the above. Much of the work is experimentally trialled on the Heterogeneous Experimental Network (HEN), a large research network deployment including devices ranging in size from low-power sensor nodes to server grade multi-processor rack systems.

Work done in the area of gateways builds upon some of the developments carried over from the EU RUNES project. Here, open-source gateways supporting multiple network technologies such as Ethernet, Wi-Fi and IEEE 802.15.4 are being enhanced with protocol stacks suitable for wireless sensor internetworking and basic multimedia capabilities. For example, a prototype gateway has been extended by the 6LoWPAN adaptation layer and by the implementation of a light-weight video-streaming service with support for commodity USB cameras.

Work in the area of IPv6-based sensor testbeds centres on efficient monitoring of tunnels and buildings, wide area IP-based network surveillance, and response to emergency situations triggered by deployed sensors in such constructions. We adapt the HEN infrastructure to design and run experiments with large numbers of network nodes, including HEN's customisable sensor testbed comprised of over 50 motes spanning a fairly large lab area with realistic radio channel conditions. We scale such experiments to hundreds of motes and allow integration with external administrative and management planes, such as development offerings by Arch Rock, or entirely proprietary vendors such as Cisco, and other open-source operating systems, routers and WSN applications.

Mobility requirements of First Response teams are studied in the context of Network Mobility (NEMO and MANEMO). Most generic wireless sensor application scenarios assume the sensor nodes are static (wired or wireless). In novel applications, such as Emergency Response teams using communications equipment and sensor networks, the nodes need be nomadic, i.e.: nodes that move along with a Response Team. In networking terms, this translates to mobility paradigms such as NEMO (Network Mobility). Furthermore, in these studies more complex network routes emerge which are best approached by MANEMO solutions (Mobile Ad-Hoc Network Mobility). We are currently investigating both these forms of mobility in Wireless Sensor Networks with external partners.

Future Work at UCL

In addition to ongoing research, the area of Transport Layer Multipath is currently being investigated for possible future work.

Enabling a transport layer protocol to create a number of sockets (with distinct paths) and hide them behind what appears to applications as a single socket allows a number of novel interactions. These include raising throughput by load balancing between the sockets, improving reliability through the redundancy provided by multiple paths and providing a mechanism for mobility by adding and removing paths.

Funding Source:

Partners

University of Luxembourg (Luxembourg)
Centre de Communications du Gouvernement (Luxembourg)
HITECH (Luxembourg)
Telindus (Belgium)
UCL (UK)
Cisco (Netherlands)
France Telecom (France)
iABG (Germany)
SES Astra (Luxembourg)
M-PLIFY (Luxembourg)
P&TLuxembourg (Luxembourg)
Korak (Slovakia)
Nokia Siemens Networks (Luxembourg)
Lancaster University (UK)
Administration of the Republic of Slovenia for Civil Protection and Disaster Relief (Slovenia)

UCL PI

P.T. Kirstein

Duration

May 2006 - July 2009

Budget:

Total 6,380,150€
EC 4,149,700€
UCL 362,850€

Website

see U-2010 for further details.