Journal of Engineering Technology
Volume. 2, Jan. 2014, Pages 75-88
Performance Study of Simple Flooding and Dominant
Pruning Protocol in Wireless Sensor Network via TOSSIM
M. K. Nor, M. F. Sulaima, M. F. Baharom, A. F. Tuani Ibrahim, F. Idris
Faculty of Electronics and Computer Engineering, Universiti Teknikal Malaysia Melaka, 76100, Hang
Tuah Jaya, Malacca, Malaysia,
Faculty of Electrical Engineering, Universiti Teknikal Malaysia Melaka, 76100, Hang Tuah Jaya,
Malacca, Malaysia,
Abstract. Energy efficiency has become one of expanding research area in
wireless sensor network. Various techniques of routing protocol have been
proposed by many researchers in their simulation technique. Routing protocol
performance comparisons have been measured through simulation with
different simulators. In this paper, two kind of broadcast routing protocols,
simple flooding and dominant pruning will be compared in terms of their
performance by using TinyOS Simulator (TOSSIM). The measurement on the
comparison is based on its coverage for a single packet being sent from
source node to its neighbors and packet delivery ratio. The objectives of this
study are to compare the efficiency of both broadcast protocols in
disseminating data between multiple sensor nodes. The effectiveness of the
deliverability efficiency for both methods will be compared and the results
are hoped to help the system engineers in choosing the best method for their
routing protocols in the future.
Keywords: Flooding, Pruning, Routing protocol, TOSSIM, Wireless sensor
network.
1 INTRODUCTION
Wireless sensor network (WSN) generally considered as one of the most
important technologies for the 21stcentury. It has a large number of low-cost,
Journal of Engineering Technology
Volume. 2, Jan. 2014, Pages 85-97
low-power and multifunctional WSN with sensing, wireless communications
and computation capabilities [1]. These sensors widely used in various
civilian, military applications, environmental monitoring, industrial process
control and biomedical application have been envisioned in the near future
[2, 3].
WSN has been introduced in a big size of sensors at the first of
implementation which limited the variety of capable applications. An
advanced evolution of 30 years in computing, communication and microelectromechanical technology have caused an important shift in WSN
research and has been attracting more attention and international
involvement. The new trend of WSN research, networked information
processing and networking techniques suitable for resource constrained
sensor nodes have been the focus. Additionally, the sensor nodes have
becoming smaller in terms of sizes and cheaper price yields into many new
varieties of application [3].
Due to its design based on using matured IC and MEMS which is
integrated with communications, sensors and signal processing altogether in
a low-cost package, it become possible for an ultra-small sensor nodes to be
fabricated which is then can be scattered on measurement sites to gather
useful information [4]. Since the nodes turned into small form-factor and can
carry only small battery, it yields a limited energy supply in it. As a result,
WSN needs to manage its power to perform the duties as long and effective
as possible. Thus, a study on energy efficiency routing protocol should be
done in a same condition and environment in order to obtain accurate result
of measurement.
2 DATA DISSEMINATION IN WSN
One of the important and basic features of WSN is the way which the data
are being forwarded among the source of sensor reading or the location of
the target node and the base station. Since it is costly in a single hop
approach in accomplishing the data exchange directly with the base station,
multi-hop packet transmission approach being introduced in order to get a
significant energy savings and reduces considerably interference between
sensor nodes especially in a high density WSNs deployment.
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Journal of Engineering Technology
Volume. 2, Jan. 2014, Pages 85-97
Figure 1. Query and data forwarding
Figure 1 depicts the basic structure of a WSN’s connection from local
network to the internet start from the reading in sensor nodes in the network
until it being sent and process to the end of link which is ended up with
remote user to monitor anything happens in the WSN’s environment or
situation. In order to response to the sinks which queries specific events
within coverage, data collections are sent using multi-hop paths. In a multihop WSN, participation of intermediate nodes will be essential between the
destination and the source [5].
Flooding is the most basic operation in mobile ad hoc networks
(MANETs)[6]. Majority of routing protocols like AODV[7], Dynamic
Source Routing (DSR)[8], Location-Aided Routing (LAR)[9], depend on
flooding to disseminate their route maintenance, route discovery, or topology
update packets etc. Since flooding is always cited in MANETs, an efficient
flooding scheme is important in process of reducing the overhead of routing
protocols and enhancing the throughput of the networks.
Before any actual transmission of data in WSN, an efficient broadcast
route is needed so that the transmission of the data will be sent successfully
along the pre-found route. In flooding schemes, it can be classified according
to the information each node keeps when the process is occurring: 1) no
neighbor information; 2) 1-hop neighbor information; 3) 2-hop neighbor
information.[10]
2.1 Simple Flooding
Blind flooding or pure flooding is the most basic flooding approach which is
every node in the network will retransmit the flooding message to others.
This simple approach assures the reachability of the flooding message.
Figure 2 shows how a basic flooding method works in an ad hoc networking.
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Journal of Engineering Technology
Volume. 2, Jan. 2014, Pages 85-97
Figure 2. Flooding of data communication networks
The algorithm of this routing however produces an excessive amount of
redundant traffic which occurs due to the transmissions of flooding message
from all nodes at the same time. This behavior causes network congestion
and yields a lot of energy consumption for a single mobile nodes to transmit
a message among them. More re-transmission will occur when more
messages are transmitted by the nodes and this will finally affect the nodes
as a failure in receiving the message due to the redundant rebroadcasts in the
network. If a node’s neighbors are many to rebroadcast the message,
contention will happen which is a severe interference between their
transmissions. Collision as well happens in such situation. This phenomenon
which is called as broadcast storm problem [10] will degrade the
performance of this flooding protocol.
To counter this situation, several approaches have been introduced.
Probabilistic schemes is one of them that being classified into four types:
cluster based, distance based, location based and counter based [10]. While
in this project, a special identification number will be assigned on each
transmitted messages to prevent repeating broadcast between the nodes and
their neighbors.
2.2 Dominant Pruning
In this protocol, 2-hop neighbor’s information is gathered in process of
reducing the cost of the routing. For simple flooding, the cost of broadcast
theoretically linear with the number of nodes but less than the costs in pure
flooding which is also known as blind flooding. However, in this Dominant
Pruning, 2-hop neighbor’s information gives the node more information on
selecting the next forwarding node that as well will reduce the cost of
transmissions in the routing [10].
In dominant pruning, the sending node selects the adjacent nodes that
should relay the packet to complete flooding process. The IDs of selected
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Journal of Engineering Technology
Volume. 2, Jan. 2014, Pages 85-97
nearby nodes are recorded in the packet as a forward list. Nearby node which
is requested to relay the packet will determine the forward list and the
process will iterated until the process of flooding is completed.
Figure 3. Method of dominant pruning
Figure 3 shows the region that been covered by each node vi and vj.
N(vi) means the neighbor of node vi which means a set of nodes within onehop distance from vi and N(N(vi)) means the neighbor of node N(vi) that
also means a set of nodes within two-hop distance from vi. Each node vi and
vj should determine their own forward list in order to enable them receive
the packet within two-hop distance.
Among these nodes, vi, vj and N(vi) have already received the packet and
N(vj) will only receive the packet only after vj forwards the packet.
Therefore a node vj needs to determine its forward list in order to forward
the packet to all nodes in U = N(N(vj)) – N(vi) – N(vj) so that all of them
receives the packet. Fig. 3 as shown below illustrates the set U. Let B(vi, vj)
= N(vj) – N(vj). Then a set of nodes F = {f1, f2, f3, …fn} B(vi, vj) such that
is selected. Finding a minimum F is the problem of the set cover which is
NP-complete. In [11], greedy set cover algorithm has been used in
determining the forward list as their approximation algorithm [12].
2.3 TOSSIM
TOSSIM is a discrete event simulator for TinyOS sensor networks and it is a
short form of TinyOS simulator. In TinyOS, applications are being compiled
for a mote. By using TOSSIM, the application can be compiled into its
framework virtually on a PC which is allowing the user to test and analyze
algorithms in a controllable environment. The main advantage is the same
code can be run for a simulation as well can be compiled into the motes for a
real application. [13]
The main objective of TOSSIM is to prepare a high accuracy simulation
for any TinyOS application. It can be manipulated in understanding the
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Journal of Engineering Technology
Volume. 2, Jan. 2014, Pages 85-97
causes of observed situation in the real world. Even TOSSIM itself is not
modeling the real world, it provides abstractions of certain real world
phenomena like bit error. It provides a radio abstraction of directed
independent bit errors between two nodes in the simulation. The users can
use the abstractions freely to implement what kind of models they desired.
Since TOSSIM builds directly from TinyOS code, for any simulation of a
protocol or any system, it is a compulsory for a user to write a TinyOS
implementation of it. From one aspect, the procedures looked complicated to
run a simulation in it, but if the implementation in the simulation is done, the
actual implementation of the application for the real world will become
easier. This gives a big advantage in implementation of wireless sensor
network.
2.4 Previous work on energy efficient WSN
Comparison on basic wireless MAC protocol on energy efficiency by using
IEEE 802.15.4 based package equipment has been done in [14]. The power
level has been observed in the transmitted node can be reduced by using
multi-channeling technology. For future work, it is recommended if
modification on source code of routing protocol can be done in process of
improving the performance of WSN which is better way in this research
area.
2.5 Application model
To verify the routing in TinyOS code, a simple linear topology needed to be
created in TOSSIM. In this case, three units of node with straight line created
in TOSSIM. When TOSSIM is started, no node can communicate with each
other. In order to enable them to communicate is by specifying a network
topology. TOSSIM default radio model is based on signal-strength. TOSSIM
simulates RF noise and interference a node hears, both from others and
outside sources which uses Closest Pattern Matching (CPM) algorithm. To
configure CPM, a noise trace needed to be feed. This can be achieved by
calling addNoiseTraceReading on a Mote object. These are the first 10 lines
of the noise.txt which is the noise trace file.
1
-98
2
-98
3
-98
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Journal of Engineering Technology
Volume. 2, Jan. 2014, Pages 85-97
4
-98
5
-98
6
-98
7
-98
8
-98
9
10
-98
-98
This piece of codes is written down to give a node a noise model from a node
trace file.
noise = open(“noise.txt”, “r”)
lines = noise.readlines()
for line in lines:
str = line.strip()
if(str != “”):
val = int(str)
for i in range(1, num_node+1):
t.getNode(i).addNoiseTraceReading(val)
It works for nodes num_node+1 which is depending on the number nodes
set in the configuration. As for verification of routing protocol this time, the
num_node has been set as four shown below. The simulation ends at 15
seconds for one packet being sent from the source (node 1) and received at
the destination (node 3).The topology is as illustrated in Figure 4 below.
Figure 4. Straight line nodes illustration
To get this configuration of topology in the simulation, the radio
connectivity graph can be scripted, and the topologies can be stored as a file
and then loaded in the simulation. The topology is saved as topology.txt file
in the same folder, and the script will read such file.
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2.6 Measurement
There are only four nodes being used to test the connection of each protocol
in verification part. In this project, comparison on the efficiency of both
protocols in disseminating messages or packets in multi-hop will be
observed. By using TOSSIM’s topology.txt features, the network of the
nodes expanded from 6 nodes to 15 nodes. Each increment of nodes number,
the transmission numbers, received packets, average delay of the
transmission and delivery ratio will be recorded.
After the desired data have been recorded, the number of nodes will be
increased one by one until it reaches 15 nodes overall. The increment was
adjusted in topology.txt file to be compiled in TOSSIM. Compiled
debugging statements presented by using Python as a text file. Generated
debug statements then analyzed to extract the information of transmissions
and receptions occurred in the network.
Figure 5. Measurement network topology
3 RESULT AND DISCUSSION
3.1 Coverage
Coverage in this measurement refers to how many nodes have received a
single packet within the node numbers available. This shows the
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Volume. 2, Jan. 2014, Pages 85-97
deliverability of every routing protocol in broadcasting the packets. By
measuring this, the capability of routing protocols in delivering message to
how many nodes can be discovered. The results obtained by observing the
received number of a single packet within the node numbers available.
Table 1 shows two different situations between dominant pruning and
simple flooding protocols. By comparing the numbers, for each number
nodes available, dominant pruning gives a perfect number of coverage
against simple flooding can provide. With the number which is only one less
than available nodes, dominant pruning covers all nodes. The coverage in
simple flooding is not enough stable.
Table 1. Covered node numbers in both protocols
Nodes
Dominant Pruning
Simple Flooding
6
7
8
9
10
11
12
13
14
15
5
6
7
8
9
10
11
12
13
15
4
6
4
5
9
4
11
11
12
12
This phenomenon gives a proof that through the process of selecting
forward nodes by dominant pruning assures the delivery to all nodes
available in the measured area. Whereas simple flooding only broadcast
message which is not being broadcasted yet gives a sign that it only forward
all message without being able to assure the needing node to get the message
nearby.
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Volume. 2, Jan. 2014, Pages 85-97
Figure 6. Coverage vs Node numbers
3.2 Delivery Ratio
Delivery ratio is the ratio of the number of delivered data packet to the
destination. This illustrates the level of delivered data to the destination.
Below is the calculation equation.
∑ Number of packet receive / ∑ Number of packet send
Higher delivery ratio is desired in any telecommunication network.
Higher delivery ratio means less loss in data transmission and vice versa.
The result shown in Table 2 shows that simple flooding provides higher
delivery ratio compare with what dominant pruning can gives. However,
when the nodes come to 15, delivery ratio of dominant pruning suddenly
became high. This should be an error in data gathering.
Table 2. Delivery ratio of both routing protocols
Nodes Dominant Pruning
Simple Flooding
6
7
8
9
10
11
12
13
14
15
0.8000
0.5714
0.8000
0.6667
0.4000
0.8000
0.3333
0.3333
0.3077
0.3077
0.0183
0.0183
0.0245
0.0211
0.0227
0.0098
0.0162
0.0171
0.0158
1.2500
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Volume. 2, Jan. 2014, Pages 85-97
Simple flooding has bigger delivery ratio due to its low transmission
numbers and high delivery numbers. Dominant pruning is difference because
its high number of transmissions yields a low delivery ratio. However, this
does not mean that simple flooding can deliver message or packet to all
available nodes compare with dominant pruning.
Since the energy of packet transmission is hundred times of task
processing, the delivery ratio of simple flooding provides gives big ratio
compare with dominant pruning capable with. Simple flooding promises less
energy consumption in its networking. However, this does not mean it is
better than dominant pruning can provide. Simple flooding with its simple
algorithm cannot assure the deliverability of the message or packet to all
nodes available. It might be useful in a measuring environment which is does
not need a continuous perfect messaging system. Its simple features
promising the longevity of battery usage.
Figure 7. Delivery ratio vs Node numbers
Dominant pruning assures its message to be delivered to the destination.
It provides a perfect condition of delivering messages to all nodes. Even it
consumes a lot of energy due to its massive number of transmission
numbers, it still important for a monitoring that needs a fully detail important
information from what being measured.
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4 CONCLUSION
In this study, there are only 15 nodes being used for the measurement.
Besides, TOSSIM should be explored more so then more routing protocols
can be measured its efficiencies. In addition, TOSSIM could give easier way
to implement the network in the real life application. Thus, in the future the
implementation of simulated protocols should be realized into real time
application.
ACKNOWLEDGE
This research was supported by grant from Universiti Teknikal Malaysia
Melaka.
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