Wireless Sensor Network (WSN) is a widely researched technology that has applications in a broad variety of fields ranging from medical, industrial, automotive and pharmaceutical to even office and home environments. It is composed of a network of self-organizing sensor nodes that operate in complex environments without human intervention for long periods of time. The energy available to these nodes, usually in the form of a battery, is very limited. Consequently, energy saving algorithms that maximize the network lifetime are sought-after. Link adaptation polices can significantly increase the data rate and effectively reduce energy consumption. In this sense, they have been studied for power optimization in WSNs in recent research proposals. In this thesis, we first examine the Adaptive Modulation (AM) schemes for flat-fading channels, with data rate and transmit power varied to achieve minimum energy consumption. Its variant, Adaptive Modulation with Idle mode (AMI), is also investigated. An Adaptive Sleep with Adaptive Modulation (ASAM) algorithm is then proposed to dynamically adjust the operating durations of both the transmission and sleep stages based on channel conditions in order to minimize energy consumption. Furthermore, adaptive power allocation schemes are developed to improve energy efficiency for multi-hop relay networks. Experiments indicate that a notable reduction in energy consumption can be achieved by jointly considering the data rate and the transmit power in WSNs. The proposed ASAM algorithm considerably improves node lifetime relative to AM and AMI. Channel conditions play an important role in energy consumption for both AM and ASAM protocols. In addition, the number of modulation stages is also found to substantially affect energy consumption for ASAM. Node lifetime under different profiles of traffic intensity is also investigated. The optimal power control values and optimal power allocation factors are further derived for single-hop networks and multi-hop relay networks, respectively. Results suggest that both policies are more suitable for ASAM than for AM. Finally, the link adaptation techniques are evaluated based on the power levels of commercial IEEE 802.15.4-compliant transceivers, and ASAM consistently outperforms AM and AMI in terms of energy saving, resulting in substantially longer node lifetime. / Thesis (Master, Electrical & Computer Engineering) -- Queen's University, 2011-02-08 18:26:29.222

É crescente a necessidade de prover segurança às informações trocadas nos mais diversos tipos de redes. No entanto, redes amplamente dependentes de dispositivos com recursos limitados (como sensores, tokens e smart cards) apresentam um desafio importante: a reduzida disponibilidade de memória, capacidade de processamento e (principalmente) energia dos mesmos dificulta a utilização de alguns dos principais algoritmos criptográficos considerados seguros atualmente. É neste contexto que se insere o presente documento, que não apenas apresenta uma pesquisa envolvendo projeto e análise de algoritmos criptográficos, mas também descreve um novo algoritmo simétrico denominado CURUPIRA. Esta cifra de bloco baseia-se na metodologia conhecida como Estratégia de Trilha Larga e foi projetada especialmente para ambientes onde existe escassez de recursos. O CURUPIRA possui estrutura involutiva, o que significa que os processos de encriptação e decriptação diferem apenas na seqüência da geração de chaves, dispensando a necessidade de algoritmos distintos para cada uma destas operações. Além disto, são propostas duas formas diferentes para seu algoritmo de geração de chaves, cada qual mais focada em segurança ou em desempenho. Entretanto, ambas as formas caracterizam-se pela possibilidade de computação das sub-chaves de round no momento de sua utilização, em qualquer ordem, garantindo uma operação com reduzido uso de memória RAM. / The need for security is a great concern in any modern network. However, networks that are highly dependent of constrained devices (such as sensors, tokens and smart cards) impose a difficult challenge: their reduced availability of memory, processing power and (more importantly) energy hinders the deployment of many important cryptographic algorithms known to be secure. In this context, this document not only presents the research involving the design and analysis of cryptographic algorithms, but also proposes a new symmetric block cipher named CURUPIRA. The CURUPIRA follows the methodology known as theWide Trail Strategy and was specially developed having constrained platforms in mind. It displays an involutional structure, which means that the encryption and decryption processes differ only in the key schedule and, thus, there is no need to implement them separately. Also, two distinct scheduling algorithms are proposed, whose main focus are either on tight security or improved performance. In spite of this difference, both of them allow the keys to be computed on-the-fly, in any desired order, assuring a reduced consumption of RAM memory during their operation.

É crescente a necessidade de prover segurança às informações trocadas nos mais diversos tipos de redes. No entanto, redes amplamente dependentes de dispositivos com recursos limitados (como sensores, tokens e smart cards) apresentam um desafio importante: a reduzida disponibilidade de memória, capacidade de processamento e (principalmente) energia dos mesmos dificulta a utilização de alguns dos principais algoritmos criptográficos considerados seguros atualmente. É neste contexto que se insere o presente documento, que não apenas apresenta uma pesquisa envolvendo projeto e análise de algoritmos criptográficos, mas também descreve um novo algoritmo simétrico denominado CURUPIRA. Esta cifra de bloco baseia-se na metodologia conhecida como Estratégia de Trilha Larga e foi projetada especialmente para ambientes onde existe escassez de recursos. O CURUPIRA possui estrutura involutiva, o que significa que os processos de encriptação e decriptação diferem apenas na seqüência da geração de chaves, dispensando a necessidade de algoritmos distintos para cada uma destas operações. Além disto, são propostas duas formas diferentes para seu algoritmo de geração de chaves, cada qual mais focada em segurança ou em desempenho. Entretanto, ambas as formas caracterizam-se pela possibilidade de computação das sub-chaves de round no momento de sua utilização, em qualquer ordem, garantindo uma operação com reduzido uso de memória RAM. / The need for security is a great concern in any modern network. However, networks that are highly dependent of constrained devices (such as sensors, tokens and smart cards) impose a difficult challenge: their reduced availability of memory, processing power and (more importantly) energy hinders the deployment of many important cryptographic algorithms known to be secure. In this context, this document not only presents the research involving the design and analysis of cryptographic algorithms, but also proposes a new symmetric block cipher named CURUPIRA. The CURUPIRA follows the methodology known as theWide Trail Strategy and was specially developed having constrained platforms in mind. It displays an involutional structure, which means that the encryption and decryption processes differ only in the key schedule and, thus, there is no need to implement them separately. Also, two distinct scheduling algorithms are proposed, whose main focus are either on tight security or improved performance. In spite of this difference, both of them allow the keys to be computed on-the-fly, in any desired order, assuring a reduced consumption of RAM memory during their operation.

This thesis presents an evaluation of the performance, in terms of throughput and latency, of two Media Access Control (MAC) mechanisms in Underwater Acoustic Networks (UANs), using a model designed in the COTS simulation tool OPNET 10.5. The carrier sense multiple access with collision avoidance is the predominant approach for implementing the MAC mechanism in UANs. However, the underwater acoustic environment is characterized by extreme propagation delays and limited bandwidth, which suggests that an Aloha-like scheme may merit consideration. The performance of these two schemes was compared with respect to two topologies: tree and grid. The results showed that an Aloha-like scheme that does not segment messages outperforms the contention-based scheme under all load conditions, in terms of both throughput and latency, for the two topologies. This thesis is the first to establish that Aloha-like MAC mechanisms can be more than a limited alternative for lightly loaded networks; more specifically, they can be the preferred choice for an environment with large propagation delays. / Lieutenant Commander, Portuguese Navy

In classical network information theory, information packets are treated as commodities, and the nodes of the network are only allowed to duplicate and forward the packets. The new paradigm of network coding, which was introduced by Ahlswede et al., states that if the nodes are permitted to combine the information packets and forward a function of them, the throughput of the network can dramatically increase. In this dissertation we focused on the design and analysis of low complexity network coding schemes for different topologies of wired and wireless networks. In the first part we studied the routing capacity of wired networks. We provided a description of the routing capacity region in terms of a finite set of linear inequalities. We next used this result to study the routing capacity region of undirected ring networks for two multimessage scenarios. Finally, we used new network coding bounds to prove the optimality of routing schemes in these two scenarios. In the second part, we studied node-constrained line and star networks. We derived the multiple multicast capacity region of node-constrained line networks based on a low complexity binary linear coding scheme. For star networks, we examined the multiple unicast problem and offered a linear coding scheme. Then we made a connection between the network coding in a node-constrained star network and the problem of index coding with side information. In the third part, we studied the linear deterministic model of relay networks (LDRN). We focused on a unicast session and derived a simple capacity-achieving transmission scheme. We obtained our scheme by a connection to the submodular flow problem through the application of tools from matroid theory and submodular optimization theory. We also offered polynomial-time algorithms for calculating the capacity of the network and the optimal coding scheme. In the final part, we considered the multicasting problem in an LDRN and proposed a new way to construct a coding scheme. Our construction is based on the notion of flow for a unicast session in the third part of this dissertation. We presented randomized and deterministic polynomial-time versions of our algorithm.

With various new alternatives of low-cost sensor devices, there is a strong demand for large scale wireless sensor networks (WSN). Energy efficiency in routing is crucial for achieving the desired levels of longevity in these networks. Existing routing algorithms that do not combine information on transmission energies on links, residual energies at nodes, and the identity of data itself, cannot reach network capacity. A proof-of-concept routing algorithm that combines data aggregation with the minimum-weight path routing is studied in this thesis work. This new algorithm can achieve much larger network lifetime when there is redundancy in messages to be carried by the network, a practical reality in sensor network applications.