TRL Research Projects

Integration of wireless sensor networks (WSNs) with Internet of Things (IoT)

Integration of wireless sensor networks (WSNs) with Internet of Things (IoT) has given rise to applications such as Smart Home Networks, Vehicular Ad hoc Sensor Networks and Health and Wellness Wireless Sensor Networks among others. These applications tend to use multi-sensor nodes that have multiple sensors mounted on a single radio board and may require handling heterogeneous traffic. Modern WSNs are therefore no longer homogeneous in nature and have different quality of service (QoS) requirements. Modeling the performance of heterogeneous data is a challenging task owing to the complexity involved. We propose a MK/HyperK/1/M queuing model for multi-sensor nodes. Queues with Poisson arrivals and hyper-exponentially distributed service time and their applications have been widely discussed in literature however hardly any work can be found that uses them for modeling WSNs. We consider that the traffic from multi-sensor node is emanating from different sensor types within the node and is hence heterogeneous. The model captures the impact of varying arrival rates, mean packet lengths, buffer size and duty cycle on throughput. The model can be used with any duty cycle-based medium access control (MAC) protocols for WSNs. To test the model we apply it to IEEE 802.15.4 in beacon-enabled mode with star topology. We further test the analytical results by ns-2.35 simulations.

Researcher:
Hamida Ali

 

An Active Network-Based Open Framework for IoT

Major benefits of wireless sensor nodes of IoT like low cost and easy deployment are advocating their usage in variety of applications. Some of them are health monitoring, agriculture, environmental and habitant monitoring, and water monitoring. These nodes are autonomous in nature. It follows that they like to operate in a dynamic and adaptive network environment. So, the communication mechanism between IoT nodes must be robust and adaptive with respect to the environmental change. Unfortunately, the traditional networking architecture supports limited and fixed network computations. These limitations inhibit flexible and robust IoT nodes communication. In addition, the energy consumption in communication nodes is high due to limited processing. To address these issues, this paper gives rebirth to the active system. The proposed active network framework brings a novel integration of the active system with recent technologies (software-defined networking and network function virtualization). As a result of integration, the active system runs as a network function virtualization under the control of software-defined networking. In our view, the amalgam of recent technologies with the active system will promote a robust and flexible IoT nodes communication along with reduced energy consumption. Moreover, various design benefits such as security, flexibility, usability, cost, and performance will be added to the system. Additionally, the proposed framework is open and generalized. It can be extended to other networks such as mobile, satellite, and vehicular networks.

Researchers:
Mahwish Amjad
Faisal Iradat

 

Wireless Sensor Networks Research and Applications of Machine Learning

Research at the TRL is currently focused on Wireless Sensor Networks, and may be categorized under two broad headings: improvements in MAC layer protocols along with their performance and analysis; secondly the application of machine learning techniques on WSNs.

In the first research area MAC layer protocols are studied for a variety of purposes including reduction in energy usage and improvements in congestion control. WSN performance analysis and modelling is also conducted along with focus on special scenarios such as networks with heterogeneous traffic.

Under the second research area use of machine learning techniques are explored for the purposes of improved WSN protocol performance as well as sensor data analytics for prediction and instrumentation control.

In all of the above research areas a variety of tools are used which include use of high-level simulation tools such as NS-2, along with Avora which is a cycle-accurate instruction-level sensor network simulator. In addition test-bed implementations on a variety of TinyOS platforms including mica2, iris, micaz are being conducted where possible.

 

Optimization of Energy Usage in Wireless Sensor Networks (WSN's)

The Wireless Sensor Networks (WSN’s) are often designed to operate in remote settings. The sensor nodes rely on batteries which are either not possible or desired to be replaced. Even the development of energy harvesting schemes for the sensor nodes has not completely resolved the issues of energy consumption. Therefore, energy being the scarcest for wireless sensor networks, should be managed efficiently in order to ensure high network lifetime. MAC layer solutions play a major role for contributing to the efficient energy performance of the WSN’s. Aim of this project is to identify opportunities for improving the existing MAC protocols in order to make them more energy efficient. The mechanisms of dynamic duty cycling, channel polling, packet aggregation and scheduling are studied and analysed in detail.

Researchers:
Shama Siddiqui
Anwar Khan
Dr. Sayeed Ghani

 

Congestion Control Mechanisms in WSN

Developing efficient congestion control strategy in WSN’s is seen as a major performance challenge due to having a direct impact on network throughput and lifetime. Congestion results in packet losses due to buffer overflow as well as collisions in the medium. Factors affecting congestion in WSN mainly include poor or time varying channel quality, need for multi-hop forwarding, asymmetric communication channels, hidden terminals and fluctuation of traffic loads. This project aims at studying existing congestion control mechanisms for WSN and developing an adaptive MAC layer framework based on the existing schemes. The major focus of the project is to efficiently deal with the congestion issues for WSN applications with heterogeneous traffic.

Researchers:
Anwar Khan
Shama Siddiqui
Dr. Sayeed Ghani

 

Analysis of End-to-End Delay Distribution and Two-Phase Contention of Hybrid MAC Protocols in WSN

The end-to-end delay is a primary parameter of performance in real-time and event driven wireless sensor networks (WSN) applications made possible due to recent advances in MEMS and CMOS technologies. It is hard to provide delay bounds for such applications due to diverse/complex nature of already resource constrained WSN. However probability distribution of the end-to-end delay through a cross layer analysis gives a close approximation. In this study we investigate the probabilistic guarantees on delay for SCP-MAC and IEEE802.15.4-MAC hybrid protocols under an accurate cross-layer framework to provide, both, single-hop delay distribution and end-to-end delay distribution. Further we also investigate the role of two-phase contention mechanism of SCP-MAC in delay and validate the analytical results through simulations.

Researchers:
Waseem Arain
Dr. Sayeed Ghani

 

Deep Learning in MAC protocols

Application of machine learning techniques have been an active area of research in various aspects of WSN like in MAC protocols, data aggregation, routing protocols etc. In MAC protocols use of contention free protocols like TDMA gives optimal results as compared to contention based protocols in case of ideal scenarios where for example we relax the constraints of battery drainage and damage of sensor nodes and data is flowing in at a good rate because contention based protocols have an additional overhead of carrier sensing and extra packets needs exchanging. However since these ideal scenarios never happen in real life therefore contention free protocols like TDMA because of their rigidity in schedule fail to give performance better than contention based protocols. Another problem is to come up with an optimum TDMA schedule such that there are no primary or secondary conflicts is an NP complete problem. In order to overcome these challenges there is a lot of research being carried out to apply machine learning algorithms to determine optimal TDMA schedule and also learn the environment and based on that update the TDMA schedule. In this study focus is on just identifying optimum TDMA schedule based on network topology using deep learning algorithms and later on extend this research to update the TDMA schedule in real time using deep learning algorithms and compare results of this algorithm with other machine learning algorithms as well as compare performance of TDMA protocol with other contention based protocols.

Researchers:
Ali Thawerni
Dr. Sayeed Ghani

 

Sensor Data Analytics (SDA)

Sensor Analytics is the statistical analysis of data that is created by wired or wireless sensors. Modern sensors and information technologies make it possible to continuously collect sensor data, which is typically obtained as real-time and real-valued numerical data. Examples include home monitoring system, which can be equipped with numerous sensors that produce data from environment. Though the data gathering systems are becoming relatively mature, a lot of innovative research needs to be done on knowledge discovery from these huge repositories of data in order to predict future behavior and possibly build better control systems. This research focuses on developing knowledge discovery methodologies mainly for real-valued data generated from a variety of home or industry appliances such as resource control systems, security systems or early warning systems.

Researchers:
Nida Saddaf Khan
Dr. Sayeed Ghani

 

TRL Publications

1. Khan, Nida Saddaf, Ghani, Muhammad Sayeed. "Predicting Collective Synchronous State of Sentiments for Users in Social Media." Mehran University Research Journal of Engineering and Technology 38, no. 3 (2019): 687-704.
    

2. Nida Saddaf Khan, Dr. Sayeed Ghani, Dr. Sajjad Haider "Real-Time Analysis of a Sensor's Data for Automated Decision Making in an IoT-Based Smart Home", published in Sensors Journal, MDPI, Vol. 18, Issue 6, May 25, 2018
    

3. Muhammad Waseem Arain, Dr. Sayeed Ghani "Meta-Survey on Medium Access Control Surveys in Wireless Sensor Networks", International Journal of Distributed Sensor Networks (IJDSN), Aug 24, 2016
    

4. Hamida Ali, Dr. Sayeed Ghani "Heterogeneous Traffic Modeling and Analysis for Wireless Sensor Networks", The International Conference on Mobile Web and Intelligent Information Systems (MobiWis-2016), Aug 22, 2016, Vienna, Austria
    

5. Hamida Ali, Dr. Sayeed Ghani "A Comparative Analysis of Protocols for Integrating IP and Wireless Sensor Networks", Journal of Networks, Jan 01, 2016, Finland
    

6. Ali Ahmed Hassan Thawerani, Dr. Sayeed Ghani "Evolving HMM for Ranking Twitter Influence", International Conference on Information and Communication Technologies, Dec 12-13, 2015, Karachi, Pakistan
    

7. Shama Siddiqui, Dr. Sayeed Ghani "A Survey on Data Aggregation Mechanisms in Wireless Sensor Networks", Dec 12-13, 2015, Karachi, Pakistan.
    

8. Nasiruddin, Dr. Sayeed Ghani "Analysis of the Markov Chain Denoising Filter Dispersion Parameter", International Conference on Information and Communication Technologies, Dec 12-13, 2015, Karachi, Pakistan.
    

9. Shama Siddiqui, Dr. Sayeed Ghani, "A Study on Channel Polling Mechanisms for Wireless Sensor Networks", Dec 14-16, 2015, Islamabad, Pakistan.
    

10. Khan, Anwar Ahmed, Shama Siddiqui, Dr. Sayeed Ghani "A Study on Channel Polling Mechanisms for the MAC Protocols in Wireless Sensor Networks", International Journal of Distributed Sensor Networks, Nov 24, 2015, Cairo, Egypt
     

11. Syed Taqi Abbas, Zainab Ahmed, Ali Inam, Dr. S.M. Faisal Iradat "Study on Localization of Moving Objects using Wireless Sensor Networks", International Conference on Information and Communication Technology Convergence (ICTC), Oct 30, 2015, Jeju, Korea, Republic of
     

12. Dr. S.M. Faisal Iradat, Dr. Sayeed Ghani "Revisiting IEEE 802.11 Backoff Process Modeling Through Information Entropy Estimation", Wireless Internet: Lecture Notes of the Institute for Computer Sciences, Social Informatics and Telecommunications Engineering, Apr 24, 2015
     

13. Dr. S.M. Faisal Iradat, Dr. Sayeed Ghani "Revisiting IEEE 802.11 Backoff Process Modeling through Information Entropy Estimation", Proceedings of WICON 2014, 8th International Internet Wireless Conference - Symposium on Wireless and Vehicular Communication, Nov 14, 2014, Lisbon, Poland
     

14. Mahad Barlas, Aimen Ali Ghazi, Syed Furqan Alam, Waqar Wajid, Shabbir Mukhi, Dr. S.M. Faisal Iradat "Droidrunner Emulator: An Emulator Framework For Running Android Apps On Windows Phones", 2nd Global Conference on Computer Science, Software, Networks & Engineering, Nov 05, 2014, Kusadasi, Turkey
     

15. Dr. S.M. Faisal Iradat, Sergey Andreev, Dr. Sayeed Ghani, Engr. Dr. Syed Irfan Nabi, Muhammad Waseem Arain "Revisiting Assumptions in Backoff Process Modeling and Queueing Analysis of Wireless Local Area Networks (WLANs)", The Computer Journal, May 21, 2014, England
     

16. Shama Siddiqui, Dr. Sayeed Ghani "Analytical Model for Delay Distribution of PRMAC", IEEE Proceedings of 11th International Conference on Frontiers of Information Technology, (FIT), Dec 16, 2013, Islamabad, Pakistan
     

17. Shama Siddiqui, Dr. Sayeed Ghani "ES-MAC: Energy Efficient Sensor-MAC Protocol for Wireless Sensor Networks", International Conference on Networking, Sensing and Control (ICNSC), Apr 10, 2013, Paris-Evry University, France
     

18. Engr. Dr. Syed Irfan Nabi, Dr. Zaheeruddin Asif, Dr. S.M. Faisal Iradat, Muhammad Waseem Arain, Dr. Sayeed Ghani "FocalPoint - Proposed Grounded Methodology for Collaborative Construction of Information Systems Security Ontologies", Information – an International Interdisciplinary Journal, Mar 01, 2013
     

19. Faizan Kazi, Hassan Najeeb, Dr. S.M. Faisal Iradat "Use of Collaborative Technologies for Building an Autonomous Unmanned Ground Vehicle (UGV)", Future Trends in Computing and Communication Technologies (FTCom), Jan 18, 2013, Malacca, Malaysia
     

20. Dr. S.M. Faisal Iradat, Sergey Andreev, Dr. Sayeed Ghani, Engr. Dr. Syed Irfan Nabi, Muhammad Waseem Arain "Revisiting Assumptions in Backoff Process Modeling and Queueing Analysis of Wireless Local Area Networks (WLANs)", Computer Journal, Jan 16, 2013
     

21. Engr. Dr. Syed Irfan Nabi, Dr. Zaheeruddin Asif, Dr. S.M. Faisal Iradat "On Framework for Dynamic Theory Generation – Grounded Ontological Theorization (GOT)", Information Systems Foundations (ISF): Theorising in a Dynamic Discipline, Sep 14, 2012, Canberra, Australia
     

22. Dr. S.M. Faisal Iradat, S. Andreev, Dr. Sayeed Ghani "Load Based Approach for Backoff Process Modeling and Queueing Analysis in IEEE 802.11 based Wireless LANs", 10th New Zealand Computer Science Research Student Conference, Apr 11, 2012, Dunedin, New Zealand [Best Paper Award]
     

23. Dr. Sayeed Ghani, Muhammad Z. Akram "Performance and Call Admission Control of WiMAX Networks", International Conference on Modelling, Simulation, and Identification (MSI 2011), Nov 07, 2011, Pittsburgh, United States
     

24. Dr. S.M. Faisal Iradat, Muhammad Waseem Arain, Sergey D. Andreev "Normalized Measure of Dispersion Study for Delay Evaluation of Mobile Nodes in IEEE 802.11 Multi-hop Wireless Networks", 7th International Wireless Communications and Mobile Computing Conference (IWCMC 2011), Jul 05, 2011, Istanbul, Turkey
     

25. Dr. Sayeed Ghani "Performance of VoIP in Wireless Networks in Presence of Self Similar Data Traffic", International Symposia on Modelling and Simulation, Jul 04, 2011, Calgary, AB, Canada
     

26. Raza H. Abedi, Nauman Aslam, Dr. Sayeed Ghani "Fault Tolerance Analysis of Heterogeneous Wireless Sensor Network", 24th Canadian Conference on Electrical and Computer Engineering (CCECE/CCGÉI 2011), May 08, 2011, Niagara Falls, Ontario, Canada
     

27. Dr. Sayeed Ghani, Dr. S.M. Faisal Iradat "Loss Probability in Networks with Pareto Distributed Traffic", Proceedings of the 2nd International Conference on Intelligent Systems, Modelling and Simulation (ISMS 2011), Jan 27, 2011, Phnom Penh
     

28. Muhammad Waseem Arain, Dr. Sayeed Ghani "Impact of Offered Load on Performance of Routing Protocols in Mobile Ad Hoc Networks", UKSim 4th European Modeling Symposium on Mathematical Modeling and Computer Simulation (EMS 2010), Nov 17, 2010, Pisa, Italy
     

29. Dr. S.M. Faisal Iradat, Dr. Sayeed Ghani "Average End-to-End Packet Delay Performance of IEEE 802.11 with Gamma Distributed Mean Service Time Intervals", 18th International Conference on Software, Telecommunications and Computer Networks (Softcomm 10), Sep 23, 2010, Split - Adriatic Islands, Croatia
     

30. Dr. S.M. Faisal Iradat, Dr. Sayeed Ghani "Determining Normalized Measure of Dispersion for Evaluating the Performance of IEEE 802.11", 10th International IEEE Conference on Next Generation Teletraffic and Wired/Wireless Advanced Networking (NEW2AN 10), LNCS 6294, Aug 23, 2010, St. Petersburg, Russian Federation
     

31. Dr. Sayeed Ghani "Analysis of Pareto Distribution on Delay Performance in Networks", Systemics and Informatics World Network, Aug 01, 2010
     

32. Muhammad Waseem Arain, Dr. Sayeed Ghani "Impact of Load-balancing in M-TORA", International Conference on Computer, Electrical and Systems Science and Engineering (ICCESSE 2010), Jul 28, 2010, Paris, France
     

33. Dr. Sayeed Ghani "The Impact of Self Similar Traffic on Wireless LAN", International Wireless Communications and Mobile Computing Conference (IWCMC 2010), Jul 02, 2010, Caen, France
     

34. Dr. S.M. Faisal Iradat, Dr. Sayeed Ghani "Limitations of Using Existing Queueing Models for Modeling IEEE 802.11 DCF", International Conference on Computer, Electrical, and Systems Science, and Engineering (ICCESSE 2010), Jun 28, 2010, Paris, France
     

35. Raza H. Abedi, Dr. Sayeed Ghani, Dr. Sajjad Haider "Selection of Cluster Heads in Wireless Sensor Networks using Bayesian Network", In Proceedings of International Conference on Computer, Electrical, Systems, Science and Engineering, Jan 01, 2010, Amsterdam, Netherlands
     

36. Muhammad Waseem Arain, Dr. Sayeed Ghani "An instantiation of Way Point Routing for Mobile ad hoc Networks", International Conference on Information and Communication Technologies, 2009 (ICICT 2009), Aug 15, 2009, Karachi, Pakistan
     

37. Rashid Faruqui, Dr. Sayeed Ghani "A Simulation Study of Block Acknowledgements and TXOPs under Varying Channel Conditions", 12th IEEE International Multitopic Conference (IEEE INMIC 2008), Dec 23, 2008, Karachi, Pakistan
     

38. Dr. S.M. Faisal Iradat, Dr. Sayeed Ghani "Study of Guard-Channel-Based Call Admission Control Schemes for 4G Cellular", Proceedings of the 5th International Workshop on Frontiers of Information Technology (FIT 2007), Dec 20, 2007, Islamabad, Pakistan
     

39. Dr. S.M. Faisal Iradat, Dr. Sayeed Ghani "Study of CDMA and TDMA Based Channel Access Techniques for IEEE 802.16 Broadband Wireless Networks", 2nd International Workshop on Frontiers of Information Technology (FIT 2004), Dec 20, 2004, Islamabad, Pakistan
     

40. Dr. Sayeed Ghani, Mischa Schwartz "A Decomposition Approximation for the Performance Evaluation of Non-Preemptive Priority in GSM/GPRS", The First International Conference on Broadband Networks (BroadNets 2004), Oct 25, 2004, San Jose, United States
     

41. Dr. Sayeed Ghani, Mischa Schwartz "A Hierarchical Analysis of Access Multiplexers with Multimedia Traffic", The Ninth IEEE Symposium on Computer and Communication (ISCC’2004), Jun 29, 2004, Alexandria, Egypt
     

42. Dr. Sayeed Ghani, Mischa Schwartz "A Decomposition Approximation for the Analysis of Voice/Data Integration", IEEE Transactions on Communications, Jul 01, 1994
     

43. Dr. Sayeed Ghani, Mischa Schwartz "Comparison of DQDB and FDDI MAC Access Protocols", Proceedings of the 16th Local Computer Networks Conference, Oct 01, 1991, Minneapolis, United States
     

44. PETER O’REILLY, Dr. Sayeed Ghani "Data Performance in Burst Switching when the voice silence periods have a hyper-exponential distribution", IEEE Transactions on Communications, Oct 01, 1987