Lightweight detection and classification for wireless sensor networks in realistic environments

ABSTRACT

A wide variety of sensors have been incorporated into a spectrum of wireless sensor network (WSN) platforms, providing flexible sensing capability over a large number of low-power and inexpensive nodes. Traditional signal processing algorithms, however, often prove too complex for energy-and-cost-effective WSN nodes. This study explores how to design efficient sensing and classification algorithms that achieve reliable sensing performance on energy-and-cost effective hardware without special powerful nodes in a continuously changing physical environment. We present the detection and classification system in a cutting-edge surveillance sensor network, which classifies vehicles, persons, and persons carrying ferrous objects, and tracks these targets with a maximum error in velocity of 15%. Considering the demanding requirements and strict resource constraints, we design a hierarchical classification architecture that naturally distributes sensing and computation tasks at different levels of the system. Such a distribution allows multiple sensors to collaborate on a sensor node, and the detection and classification results to be continuously refined at different levels of the WSN. This design enables reliable detection and classification without involving high-complexity computation, reduces network traffic, and emphasizes resilience and adaptation to the realistic environment. We evaluate the system with performance data collected from outdoor experiments and field assessments. Based on the experience acquired and lessons learned when developing this system, we abstract common issues and introduce several guidelines which can direct future development of detection and classification solutions based on WSNs.

REFERENCES

• 1: Exscal web site. http://www.cast.cse.ohio-state.edu/exscal/index.php?page=main.
• 2: Honeywell magnetometers. http://www.ssec.honeywell.com/magnetic/.
• 3: Mica2 mote. http://www.xbow.com/Products/productsdetails.aspx?sid=72.
• 4: Micropower inpulse radar by advantaca. http://www.advantaca.com/radar.htm.
• 5: VigilNet web site. http://www.cs.virginia.edu/~control/SOWN/index.html.
• 6: Sagnik Bhattacharya , Hyung Kim , Shashi Prabh , Tarek Abdelzaher, Energy-conserving data placement and asynchronous multicast in wireless sensor networks, Proceedings of the 1st international conference on Mobile systems, applications and services, p.173-185, May 05-08, 2003, San Francisco, California [doi>10.1145/1066116.1066120]
• 7: R. Brooks, P. Ramanathan, and A. Sayeed. Distributed target classification and tracking in sensor networks. Proceedings of the IEEE, 91(8):1163--1171, 2003.
• 8: P. Dutta, M. Grimmer, A. Arora, S. Bibyk, and D. Culler. Design of a wireless sensor network platform for detecting rare, random, and ephemeral events. InProc. of Fourth Intl. Conf. on Information Processing in Sensor Networks (IPSN'05), 2005.
• 9: Z. Feng, S. Jaewon, and R. James. Information-driven dynamic sensor collaboration for target tracking. IEEE Signal Processing Magazine, 19(2), March 2002.
• 10: T. He, S. Krishnamurthy, J. A. Stankovic, T. Abdelzaher, L. Luo, R. Stoleru, T. Yan, L. Gu, G. Zhou, J. Hui, and B. Krogh. Vigilnet:an integrated sensor network system for energy-efficient surveillance. In submission to ACM Transaction on Sensor Networks, 2004.
• 11: Tian He , Sudha Krishnamurthy , John A. Stankovic , Tarek Abdelzaher , Liqian Luo , Radu Stoleru , Ting Yan , Lin Gu , Jonathan Hui , Bruce Krogh, Energy-efficient surveillance system using wireless sensor networks, Proceedings of the 2nd international conference on Mobile systems, applications, and services, June 06-09, 2004, Boston, MA, USA [doi>10.1145/990064.990096]
• 12: T. He, P. Vicaire, T. Yan, Q. Cao, G. Zhou, L. Gu, L. Luo, R. Stoleru, J. A. Stankovic, and T. Abdelzaher. Achieving Long-Term Surveillance in VigilNet. Insubmission.
• 13: Jason L. Hill , David E. Culler, Mica: A Wireless Platform for Deeply Embedded Networks, IEEE Micro, v.22 n.6, p.12-24, November 2002 [doi>10.1109/MM.2002.1134340]
• 14: Jason Hill , Robert Szewczyk , Alec Woo , Seth Hollar , David Culler , Kristofer Pister, System architecture directions for networked sensors, Proceedings of the ninth international conference on Architectural support for programming languages and operating systems, p.93-104, November 2000, Cambridge, Massachusetts, United States
• 15: L. Luo, T. F. Abdelzaher, T. He, and J. A. Stankovic. Design and comparison of lightweight group management strategies in envirosuite. InDistributed Computing in Sensor Systems (DCOSS '05), June 2005.
• 16: Samuel Madden , Michael J. Franklin , Joseph M. Hellerstein , Wei Hong, TAG: a Tiny AGgregation service for Ad-Hoc sensor networks, Proceedings of the 5th symposium on Operating systems design and implementation

  Due to copyright restrictions we are not able to make the PDFs for this conference available for downloading

  , December 09-11, 2002, Boston, Massachusetts [doi>10.1145/1060289.1060303]
• 17: Miklós Maróti , Branislav Kusy , Gyula Simon , Ákos Lédeczi, The flooding time synchronization protocol, Proceedings of the 2nd international conference on Embedded networked sensor systems, November 03-05, 2004, Baltimore, MD, USA [doi>10.1145/1031495.1031501]
• 18: S. Pattem, S. Poduri, and B. Krishnamachari. Energy-quality tradeoffs for target tracking in wireless sensor networks. InProc. of 2nd Intl. Conf. on Information Processing in Sensor Networks (IPSN'03), 2003.
• 19: Gyula Simon , Miklós Maróti , Ákos Lédeczi , György Balogh , Branislav Kusy , András Nádas , Gábor Pap , János Sallai , Ken Frampton, Sensor network-based countersniper system, Proceedings of the 2nd international conference on Embedded networked sensor systems, November 03-05, 2004, Baltimore, MD, USA [doi>10.1145/1031495.1031497]
• 20: R. Stoleru, T. He, and J. A. Stankovic. Walking GPS: A Practical Solution for Localization in Manually Deployed Wireless Sensor Networks. In1st IEEE Workshop on Embedded Networked Sensors EmNetS-I, October 2004.
• 21: Robert Szewczyk , Alan Mainwaring , Joseph Polastre , John Anderson , David Culler, An analysis of a large scale habitat monitoring application, Proceedings of the 2nd international conference on Embedded networked sensor systems, November 03-05, 2004, Baltimore, MD, USA [doi>10.1145/1031495.1031521]
• 22: Q. Wang, W. Chen, R. Zheng, K. Lee, and L. Sha. Acoustic target tracking using tiny wireless sensor devices. Networks (IPSN'03), 2003.
• 23: N. Xu. Implementation of data compression and FFT in TinyOS. http://enl.usc.edu/~ningxu/papers/lzfft.pdf.
• 24: Pei Zhang , Christopher M. Sadler , Stephen A. Lyon , Margaret Martonosi, Hardware design experiences in ZebraNet, Proceedings of the 2nd international conference on Embedded networked sensor systems, November 03-05, 2004, Baltimore, MD, USA [doi>10.1145/1031495.1031522]
• 25: F. Zhao, J. Liu, L. Guibas, and J. Reich. Collaborative signal and information processing: An information directed approach. Proceedings of the IEEE, 91(8):1199--1209, 2003.

INDEX TERMS

Primary Classification:
  C. Computer Systems Organization
  C.2 COMPUTER-COMMUNICATION NETWORKS
      C.2.1 Network Architecture and Design

Additional Classification:
  C. Computer Systems Organization
  C.3 SPECIAL-PURPOSE AND APPLICATION-BASED SYSTEMS
      Subjects: Real-time and embedded systems
  C.4 PERFORMANCE OF SYSTEMS
      Subjects: Design studies

General Terms:
Design, Experimentation, Measurement, Performance

Keywords:
classification, vigilNet, wireless sensor networks