A wireless sensor network is designed to monitor events and report this information to a central location, or sink node. The information is required to efficiently travel through the network. It is the job of the routing protocol to officiate this process. With transmissions consuming the majority of the energy available to a sensor node, it becomes important to limit their usage while still maintaining reliable communication with the sink node. The aim of the research covered in this dissertation was to adapt the flat and hierarchical architectures to create a new hybrid that draws on current protocol theories. The designed and developed protocol, Hybrid Energy Efficient Routing (HEER) protocol, builds upon the initial groundwork laid out by the previously developed Simple Energy Efficient Routing (SEER) protocol designed by C.J. Leuschner. Another aspect of the work was to focus on the current lack of credibility that is present in the WSN research community. The validity of SEER was examined and tested and this led to the main focus of this research, ensuring that HEER proves to be valid. The HEER protocol for wireless sensor networks is designed such that it is computationally simple, limits the number of transmissions, employs a cross-layer approach, is reliable, is energy-aware, has limited support for mobile nodes, is energy efficient, and most importantly is credible. Sensor nodes are extremely limited when it comes to their available energy resources. To maximise the node and network lifetimes requires the designed algorithm to be energy aware and as efficient as possible. A cross-layer design approach is followed which allows for the different layers of the OSI model to interact. The HEER protocol limits the number of transmissions that are used for network operation. This is achieved by using a minimal amount of messages for network setup and by selecting the optimal route. Route selection is calculated using hop count, current energy available, energy available on the receiving node, and lastly the energy required to reach the destination node. HEER combines and expands upon the method used by SEER for route selection. Network lifetime for networks of large sizes is increased, mainly due to more efficient routing of messages. The protocol was kept computationally simple and energy efficient, thus maintaining network survivability for as long as possible. / Dissertation (MEng)--University of Pretoria, 2008. / Electrical, Electronic and Computer Engineering / unrestricted

In recent year, wireless sensor networks have gradually become an indispensable part of people's daily lives. Energy consumption and energy harvesting play an important role in these systems. In outdoor, there is no doubt that solar energy is more suitable to powering the wireless sensor nodes. Although the energy consumption of these systems has been greatly reduced and the lifetime of sensor nodes also be improved through the larger capacity of supercapacitor or larger size of solar panel. But it will generate another kind of squander, how to choose a suitable solar panel and supercapacitor is appearance in our view. In this paper, I optimized the solar energy harvesting system from two aspects of capacity of supercapacitor and size of solar panel. The objective of this thesis has shown that as small solar panel and supercapacitor as possible for a given load of these systems under low consumption condition. Here, I establish the simulation in Simulink of Matlab, and build a low-power consumption; high-security solar energy harvesting hardware system for monitoring environment in Sundsvall, Sweden. Through the comparison between the simulation and real monitor to verify the feasibility

The number of potential applications for wireless sensor networks is immense. These networks may consist of large numbers of low cost, low power, disposable sensor nodes that can be deployed inside or close to phenomena to be monitored. The nature of these networks necessitates specific design requirements, of which energy efficiency is paramount. The limited available energy of sensor nodes is mainly drained during communication and computational processing. An energy efficient routing protocol can limit the number of message transmissions and the computational complexity of finding routing paths. Many routing protocols have been proposed for wireless sensor networks. Most of them are computationally complex, require a large number of messages to be transmitted or require that sensor nodes possess certain hardware capabilities in order to function. The objective of this dissertation was to develop a Simple Energy Efficient Routing (SEER) protocol for wireless sensor networks that is computationally simple, reduces the number of transmitted messages and does not impose any hardware prerequisites. The new routing protocol, which was developed during this research, uses a flat network structure for scalability and source initiated communication along with event-driven reporting to reduce the number of message transmissions. Computational simplicity is achieved by using a simple method for routing path selection. The SEER protocol selects the next hop for a message by choosing a neighbour that has a smaller or equal hop count to the current node. If multiple neighbours satisfy this requirement, the neighbour with the highest remaining energy is chosen as the next hop. Each node in the network has a table containing the hop count and remaining energy of each of its neighbours. Periodic messages sent through the network update these neighbour tables. SEER uses a novel approach to select the next hop of a message during routing. The protocol increases the lifetime of the network dramatically, compared to other similar routing protocols. This improvement is directly related to the reduction in the number of transmissions made by each node. The simplicity of the protocol reduces the required computational processing compared to other protocols, and at the same time makes this one of the few available protocols that does not impose hardware requirements on nodes in order to function. / Dissertation (MEng (Computer Engineering))--University of Pretoria, 2007. / Electrical, Electronic and Computer Engineering / unrestricted

Zigbee network is a popular choice for deploying low power personal area network (LoWPAN). The application areas vary but the most popular are industrial area monitoring and home automation. But Zigbee has been identified to have weak security and is not applicable for industrial implementation. This paper is collaboration with Ericsson to investigate Zigbee network security and implementation. This paper will cover security solutions for Zigbee and touch on how to configure Zigbee network such that it can operate for a long period of time without battery changes. The security solutions will demonstrate how public-key respective symmetric key algorithm can be used for enhancing Zigbee security such that it provide authentication and authorization of joining devices while maintaining confidentiality and integrity of the network communication. Security solutions will also take regards to the power consumption of each proposed solution. For the network configuration part of the thesis, it will present node lifetime for different network configuration, i.e. how polling period between each message will affect the total cur- rent consumption of a node and how the joining procedure, depending on the security solution will affect the total node lifetime. Achieving longer node lifetime is desired because it is assumed that the network will be deployed in remote and unfavorable areas. The result of this paper compares different solutions for enhancing the security. Further, it concludes that Zigbee security with authentication and authorization of joining devices is reached through secret-splitting key establishment - which is the best solution. This is possible while maintaining low power consumption in the network. / Zigbee nätverk är ett populärt val vid uppsättning av ett nätverk med låg strömförbrukning. Zigbees användningsområde är olika men den är väldigt populär inom industriell områdesövervakning och hemautomation. Däremot har Zigbees säkerhet varit en nackdel, då det har framkommit att den inte möter kraven för industriell användning. Arbetet kom till genom ett samarbete med Ericsson och KTH för att undersöka Zigbee nätverks implementation och säkerhet. Arbetet bearbetar olika säkerhetslösningar för Zigbee nätverk och hur den kan implementeras för att uppnå långtidsanvändning utan batteribyte. Säkerhetslösningar bygger på public-key samt symmetric key kryptografi algoritmer för att förbättra och öka Zigbees säkerhet genom autentisering och tillåtelse av noder som ansluter sig till nätverket. Nätverkets konfiguration för långtidsanvändning redovisas genom att jämföra olika polling tidsintervaller mellan meddelanden. Långtidsanvändning utan batteribyte är viktigt för att nätverket kommer implementeras i ett avlägset område som är svåråtkomlig. Arbetet redovisar och jämföra olika lösningar för att öka säkerheten för Zigbee nätverk. Den optimala lösningen för att uppnå autentisering samt tillåtelse av noder som ansluter sig uppnås med nyckel skapande genom secret-splitting metoden. Metoden följer NIST rekommendationer och anses vara säker, därav uppfyller den kraven för industriell implementation. Nätverkets säkerhet ökar samt bibehåller ett nätverk med låg strömförbrukning.