Seminar Topic :

SPIN - Protocols for

Wireless Sensor Networks
 Motivation
• Dissemination is the process of distributing individual
sensor observations to the whole network, treating all
sensors as sink nodes

• Limited supply of energy

• Limited computational power

• Limited communication resources

 Motivation-Classic Flooding
• Classic approach for dissemination
• Source node sends data to all neighbors
• Receiving node stores and sends data to all its
neighbors
• Requires no protocol state
• Disseminates data quickly
• Deficiencies
– Implosion
– Overlap
– Resource blindness
 Motivation – Classic Flooding
A
a a
• Implosion
– Always sends data to a neighbor, B C
even it has already received the
data from another node
a a
– Function of topology D

• Overlap
– Nodes often cover overlapping
areas (e.g. temperature distr.) A r
q
– Function of topology and C
mapping of observed data B s
q

• Resource blindness
– Amount of energy available does
not affect the communication
activities
 Concept - Idea
• SPIN = Sensor Protocols for Information via Negotiation

• Negotiation-Before transmitting data, nodes negotiate with

each other to overcome implosion and overlap

• Resource adaptation-Each sensor node has resource

manager

• SPIN efficiently disseminates information among sensors in

an energy-constrained wireless sensor network.
 Concept - Assumptions

• Sensor applications need to communicate about data

they have and data they need to obtain
– Exchanging sensor data is expensive, whereas
exchanging meta-data is not

• Nodes must monitor and adapt to changes in their

energy resources
– Extend lifetime of the system
 Architecture – Meta-Data
• Completely describe the data
– Must be smaller than the actual data for SPIN to be beneficial
– If you need to distinguish pieces of data, their meta-data should
differ
• Meta-Data is application specific
– Sensors may use their geographic location or unique node ID
– Camera sensor may use coordinate and orientation
• Application must be able to interpret and synthesize its
own meta-data
 Architecture – Messages
• ADV – data advertisement
– Node that has data to share can advertise this by
transmitting an ADV with meta-data attached
• REQ – request for data
– Node sends a request when it wishes to receive some
actual data
• DATA – data message
– Contains actual sensor data with a meta-data header
– Usually much bigger than ADV or REQ messages
SPIN-1 – Example

Has Data
to
disseminate
SPIN-1 – Example - Advertise
Stage

AD
AD
VV

AD
AD
VV
SPIN-1 – Example - Request Stage

RE
RE
QQ

RE
RE
QQ
SPIN-1 – Example - DATA Stage

DAT
DAT
A
A

DAT
DAT
A
A
 SPIN-1 – a 3-Stage Handshake
Protocol
• Needs knowledge about single-hop network
neighbors
• Adaptation for lost networks
– Compensate lost ADV messages by re-advertising
periodically
– Compensate lost REQ/DATA by re-requesting after
fixed time
• Adaptation for mobile networks
– Topology changes trigger updates to neighbor lists of
nodes
– When a nodes neighbor list changed, re-advertise all
its data
 SPIN-2 – Energy-conservation
• Adds simple energy-conservation heuristic to SPIN-1

• Incorporate low-energy-threshold

• Works as SPIN-1 when energy level is high

• Reduce participation of node when approaching low-energy-threshold

– When node receives data, it only initiates protocol if it can participate in all
three stages with all neighbor nodes
– When node receives advertisement, it does not request the data

• Node still exhausts energy below threshold by receiving ADV or REQ

messages
 Implementation
Simulation
• no physical implementation but
simulation with network
simulator ns-2
– event-driven network simulator
– extensive support for
simulation of: TCP, routing,
multicast protocols
– functionality of ns was
extended to implement SPIN
family, node class extended to
create a Resource-Adaptive
Node, components
 Implementation
Simulation test bed
• 25-node wireless test network, fully
connected graph
• edges signify communicating
neighbors
 Evaluation
Other dissemination algorithms for comparison:

• Classic Flooding (explained on former slides)

• Gossiping

• Ideal dissemination
 Evaluation
Gossiping
• alternative to classic flooding, 1 2

use randomization to conserve

energy
• only forward to one randomly A B D

selected neighbor, not to all 3

• no implosion: only one copy of

the data travels the network 4

• slow distribution of data, slow

dissipation of energy
• resume: avoids implosion, but C

overlap problem still exists

 Evaluation
Ideal Dissemination

• explanation by an example: distribution

in 2 steps A
– ideal dissemination of observed (a, c) 1: (a)
1: (a, c)
data a and b
– B and C have common neighbor
D, but no implosion
– A and C have overlapping initial B C
data item c, but no overlapping (c)
problem

• simulate result of an ideal 1: (c)

dissemination using a modified SPIN-1 2: (a)
D
– eliminate time and energy costs
for ADV and REQ messages
– series of DATA messages in the
network = ideal dissemination
 Evaluation
Simulations
• unlimited energy simulation
– data acquired over time
– energy dissipated over time
• limited energy simulation (1.6 Joules total energy in the
network)
– data acquired over time
– energy dissipated over time
• for unlimited energy scenario: SPIN-1 = SPIN-2, compared
with flooding, gossiping and the ideal data distribution
protocol
 Simulation: unlimited energy
• message profiles for the simulations • high degree node
• only SPIN-1 uses meta-data – lie upon a critical path in the
• SPIN-1 does not send any redundant network
data message – may die out before other nodes and
• average energy dissipated for each node partition the network
depending on its degree
Simulation: unlimited energy
 Simulation: limited energy
• total energy in the system: 1.6 Joule
• flooding exhausts energy quickly
• if energy is very limited, gossiping can
accomplish the most data distribution
• SPIN-2 distribute 10% more data than
SPIN-1
 Conclusion
• SPIN is family of data dissemination protocols

• meta-data negotiation and resource adaptation

– only transmit data when necessary, never waste energy on useless transmissions
– when energy is low: node cuts back its activities

• solved implosion and overlap problem

• only local neighborhood information, thus well suited for mobile sensors

• time performance: comparable to classic flooding

• energy performance: 25% energy of classic flooding, SPIN-2 distributes 60% more
data per unit energy than flooding

• gossiping outperformed in both disciplines

• close to ideal dissemination

 References

(1) Heinzelmann, W. R.; Kulik, J.; and Balakrishnan, H.

Adaptive Protocols for Information Dissemination in Wireless Sensor
Networks. In Fifth ACM/IEEE MOBICOM Conference (August 1999).

(2) ns-2 Network Simulator, http://www.isi.edu/nsnam/ns/