THE UWB SOLUTION FOR MULTIMEDIA TRAFFIC IN WIRELESS SENSOR NETWORKS

International Journal of Wireless & Mobile Networks (IJWMN) Vol. 3, No. 5, October 2011
DOI : 10.5121/ijwmn.2011.3503 29
THE UWB SOLUTION FOR MULTIMEDIA TRAFFIC
IN WIRELESS SENSOR NETWORKS
A.A.BOUDHIR, M. BOUHORMA, M. BEN AHMED and ELBRAK SAID
LIST Laboratory, Faculty Of Sciences and Techniques, Tangier Morocco
CBAR, Al Yamamah university, Kingdom of Saudi Arabia
hakim.anouar@ieee.org , bouhorma@gmail.com, med.benahmed@gmail.com,
elbraks@gmail.com
ABSTRACT
Several researches are focused on the QoS (Quality of Service) and Energy consumption in wireless
Multimedia Sensor Networks. Those research projects invest in theory and practice in order to extend the
spectrum of use of norms, standards and technologies which are emerged in wireless communications.
The performance of these technologies is strongly related to domains of use and limitations of their
characteristics. In this paper, we give a comparison of ZigBee technology, most widely used in sensor
networks, and UWB (Ultra Wide Band) which presents itself as competitor that present in these work
better results for audiovisual applications with medium-range and high throughput.
KEYWORDS
WMSNs, UWB, ZigBee, NS2
1. INTRODUCTION
The establishment of wireless networks in various domains knew an amazing success. In front
of this progress several researches are followed to enlarge the range of its use. Networks of
wireless sensors are a particular Ad hoc network, integrated with an active applications allowing
control, surveillance and help to decision.
The introduction of wireless communication is dramatically changing our lives. The ability to
communicate anytime anywhere increases our quality of lives and improves our business
productivity. The recent technological developments that allow us to execute bandwidth-hungry
multimedia applications over the wireless media add new dimensions to our ability to
Communicate. Various technologies appeared in sensors networks and assure the
communication differently, this difference comes especially in the given quality of service and
solutions given to constraints.
In this document we study the quality of service of technologies Zigbee and UWB (Ultra Wide
Band) as well as the consumption of energy for a multimedia flux using the simulator NS2.This
to solicit the adapted technology to the transmission of Multimedia flux in WMSN(Wireless
Multimedia Sensor Network).

30
2. RELATED WORKS
Several papers focused their works on WMNs treating an enormous topics related to energy
efficiency, QoS, routing protocols on MAC and physical layers. Karapistoli et al [1] identify the
cross-layer dependencies between the specified physical layer and the higher layers of the
communication. In [2] authors raise a ranging method of localization technique in WSN based
on ultra-wideband (UWB) communication technology. Melodia et al [3], present a cross-layer
communication architecture based on the time-hopping impulse radio ultra wide band
technology to deliver QoS to heterogeneous applications in WMSNs, by leveraging and
controlling interactions among different layers of the protocol stack according to applications
requirements. Berthe et al [4], propose a WSN simulation architecture based on the IR-UWB
technique. At the PHY layer, they take into account the pulse collision by dealing with the pulse
propagation delay. They also modelled MAC protocols specific to IRUWB,for WSN
applications and propose a generic and reusable sensor and sensing channel model. Most of the
WSN application performances can be evaluated thanks to this simulation architecture.
3. WIRELESS SENSOR NETWORKS
Wireless sensor networks (WSNs) contain hundreds or thousands of sensor nodes equipped with
sensing, computing and communication abilities. Each node has the ability to sense elements of
its environment, perform simple computations, and communicate among its peers or directly to
an external base station or sink (figure.1). The node or mote that needs to operate for a long time
on a tiny battery is composed of a processor, a memory, a transmitter/ receiver radio, an
embedded system composed of a unit of sensing and a battery (figure2). This component can be
in sleep mode or listen only to the traffic. The unit of transmission is the unit which uses most
energy compared to others units constituting a sensor [05].
Figure.1: Architecture of Wireless Sensor Network
4. MULTIMEDIA WIRELESS SENSOR NETWORKS
The technology development in electronics contributed to the availability of miniaturized
materials with low cost such as CMOS cameras and microphones which helped more the
development of wireless multimedia sensor networks (WMSN), devices that are able to retrieve
multimedia content such as the ubiquitous audio and video, still images, and data from
environmental sensors.
Figure.2: Architecture of Node

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Wireless multimedia sensor networks will not only reinforce the networks of sensors such as
monitoring, home automation and environmental monitoring, but will also enable several new
applications like monitoring networks multimedia, storage of potentially activities, control
systems traffic, medical surveillance environmental monitoring, location services, industrial
process control…
5. THE QUALITY OF SERVICE
In telecommunication networks, the goal of QoS is to reach a better behavior of communication
for the content which must be properly routed, and network resources are used optimally [06].
Generally, researches on QoS in wireless networks in several key areas; models of QoS
differentiation at the MAC layer (Medium Access Control) protocols for signaling and routing
with QoS. The need of QoS can be specified into measurable parameters mentioned in (3), (4)
and (5):
-End to End Delay:
-Bandwidth:
-Packet delivery ratio:
6. TECHNOLOGIES EMERGED IN WIRELESS SENSOR
COMMUNICATION
Many technologies are allowed to wireless transmission of information. Each represents a
different use, according to its characteristics (transmission speed, maximum flow, Cost of
infrastructure cost of equipment connected Security, Flexibility of installation and use, power
consumption and autonomy …).
6.1. ZigBee Technology
ZigBee is a specification for a suite of high level communication protocols using small, low-
power digital radios based on the IEEE 802.15.4 standard for wireless personal area networks
(WPANs), such as wireless headphones connecting with cell phones via short-range radio. The
technology defined by the ZigBee specification is intended to be simpler and less expensive
than other WPANs, such as Bluetooth. ZigBee is targeted at radio-frequency (RF) applications
such as industrial control and monitoring, wireless sensor networks, asset and inventory
tracking, intelligent agriculture, and security would benefit from such a network topology that
require a low data rate, long battery life, and secure networking.
ZigBee builds upon the physical layer and medium access control defined in IEEE standard
802.15.4 for low-rate WPAN's. The specification goes on to complete the standard by adding
four main components: network layer, application layer, ZigBee device objects (ZDO's) and
manufacturer-defined application objects which allow for customization and favor total
integration.
PDR (%) = 100 x (5)
EED = (3)
BW = packets size x (4)

32
ZigBee operates in the industrial, scientific and medical (ISM) radio bands; 868 MHz in
Europe, 915 MHz in the USA and Australia, and 2.4 GHz in most jurisdictions worldwide.
(figure.3)[07].
6.2. UWB Technology
Ultra Wide Band (UWB) technology based on sending pulses of energy low power over a wide
frequency band is able to communicate wirelessly as an indoor short-range high-speed
communication. One of the most exciting characteristics of UWB is that its bandwidth is over
110 Mbps (up to 480 Mbps) which can satisfy most of the multimedia applications, especially in
wireless sensor networks, such as audio and video delivery in home networking and it can also
act as a wireless cable replacement of high speed serial bus such as USB 2.0 and IEEE 1394.
UWB works via chip-based radios that modulate signals across the entire available ultra
wideband spectrum, which in the US is from 3.1 to 10.6 GHz (figure.4) [09]. In [08] several
standards are mentioned giving the differences among four technologies. Each one is based on
an IEEE standard.
Obviously, UWB and Wi-Fi provide a higher data rate, while Bluetooth and ZigBee give a
lower one. In general, the Bluetooth, UWB, and ZigBee are intended for WPAN communication
(about 10m), while Wi-Fi is oriented to WLAN (about 100m). However, ZigBee can also reach
100m in some applications.
7. SIMULATION AND RESULTS
7.1. Environment Of Simulation
The simulation tool used is the NS2 simulator dedicated to wireless networks and considered a
crucial asset search.
The version of ns2-allinone-2.29 [10]used, incorporate into the architecture of the MAC layer
(mac.cc / mac.h) and physical (phy.cc / phy.h) modules and standard IEEE.802.15.4 supporting
radio pulses compliant to IEEE 802.15.3 UWB which adds to its MAC layer modules DCC-
MAC layer (mac-ifcontrol*. (cc, h)) and physical layer (interference-phy*. (cc, h) ) by
implementing the NOAH protocol that allows direct communications (unlike AODV, DSR, ...)
between wireless nodes, or between base stations and mobile nodes. It can simulate scenarios
where multi-hop routing is undesirable.
*Mac IFcontrol [10]: Defines the MAC layer for UWB, functions of transmission, queue
management, control packets and listening mode etc.
*Interference-phy [10]: defines possible states (reception, transmission, listen or hang) and
manages the time to listen and reception etc.
Figure.3: The three frequency band for IEEE 802.15.4 standard Figure.4: Frequency Spectrum in UWB
technology

33
7.2. PARAMETERS OF SIMULATIONS
In order to evaluate the quality of service, the simulations treat a comparative metric subject to
two different multicast protocols AODV [11], [12] and DSR [11],[12] for ZigBee technology
and protocol NOAH for UWB parameters as mentioned below. The figure 5 list an example of
architecture adopted, using node as wireless multimedia sensors and a collector of data “C”
(node0 in NAM Visualisator). The simulation results are drawn from the files "tr" generated
and analyzed by file "awk".
The table 2 summarizes the simulation parameters used for the ZigBee and UWB technologies:
fig.5: Sample of architecture adopted in simulations
7.3. RESUALTS AND DISCUSSION
The following figures illustrate a comparison based on the results of previous simulations show
the benefit of UWB in the delivery of a high rate of packets (fig7 and fig8) compared to ZigBee
(fig6) with a wide bandwidth (fig9) and a delay (fig10) start to finish while consuming a
minimum of Energy (fig11)for less dense networks:
TABLE 2
Parameters used in ZigBee and UWB simulations
Technology ZigBee UWB
Protocol AODV / DSR NOAH
Mac /phy 802_15_4 802_15_3
Chanel Wireless Channel InterferencePhy
Propagation TwoRayGround PropTarokh
Topology 20*20 20*20
Traffic UDP/FTP UDP/ FTP
Number of nodes 7 – 25 - 101 7 - 25 - 101
RtPower 0.00075 w 0.00075 w
TxPower 0.00175 w 0.00175 w
Initial Energy 1000 j 1000 j
Sleep Energy 0.00005j 0.00005j

34
fig.6 : Stream Packets Vs Time Using ZigBee
fig.7 : Stream Packets Vs Time Using impulse radion UWB
PacketsDeliveryratio
Number of Nodes
Fig.9: BandwidthFig.8: Packets Delivery Ratio
Number of Nodes
ZigBee-AODV
ZigBee-DSR
UWB-NOAH
ZigBee-AODV
ZigBee-DSR
UWB-NOAH
bandwith

35
With the simulation parameters mentioned, the UWB technology offered a considerable quality
of service in term of end to end delay, packet delivery ratio, bandwith and energy for a sensor
network with less density of network when sending media streams. Indeed, this technology has
gives a good results compared to those of the ZigBee technology especially for a network
average of 25 nodes which promotes greater use of these sensors for the transfer of multimedia
data.
8. CONCLUSION
This work has explored a survey on UWB and ZigBee standars in order to compare their
performance in wireless multimedia sensor network context. We have presented in this article a
quality of service of standards mentionned above, using the popular metrics as a network
performance tools. In particular, those metrics, already presented, were evaluated to study the
quality of communication of multimedia data under the network simulator NS2.
Furthermore, we found that the performance tests conducted on the consumption of energy,
packet delivery ratio, bandwidth and end-to-end delay, have shown that the UWB technology
responds well performance criteria desired. Indeed, the ultra wide band (UWB) technology has
the potential to enable low-power consumption, high data rate communications within tens of
meters, characteristics that make it an ideal choice for WMSNs.
REFERENCES
[1] Karapistoli, Eirini; Gragopoulos, Ioannis; Tsetsinas, Ioannis; Pavlidou, Fotini-Niovi “UWB
Technology to Enhance the Performance of Wireless Multimedia Sensor Networks “ in
Computers and Communications, 2007. ISCC 2007. 12th IEEE Symposium on
[2] Chunsen Xu, Yanjuan Zhao, Yan Zhang in ,“Localization Technology in Wireless Sensor
Networks Based on UWB” . International Conference on Wireless Networks and Information
Systems (2009)
[3] T Melodia, I F Akyildiz “Cross-Layer Quality of Service Support for UWB Wireless Multimedia
Sensor Networks “ in IEEE INFOCOM The 27th Conference on Computer Communications
(2008)
[4] Berthe, A.; Lecointre, A.; Dragomirescu, D.; Plana, R. “Simulation Platform for Wireless Sensor
Networks Based on Impulse Radio Ultra Wide Band Networks” ICN '09. Eighth International
Conference on Digital Object Identifier: 10.1109/ICN.2009.48 (2009).
ZigBee-AODV
ZigBee-DSR
UWB-NOAH
Fig.11: Energy Consumption
Number of NodesNumber of Nodes
ZigBee-AODV
ZigBee-DSR
UWB-NOAH
Fig.10: End to End Delay
End2EndDelayinsec
Energyinjoules

36
[5] Yacine CHALLAL “Réseaux de Capteurs Sans Fil“ –University of Technology in compiegne,
France.
[6] Wendi Rabiner Heinzelman, Anantha Chandrakasan, and Hari “Energy-Efficient
Communication Protocol for Wireless Microsensor Networks” Proc. of the 33rd Hawaii
International Conference on System Sciences – 2000.
[7] Houarrii MAOUCHI “ Routage avec Qualité de Service dans AODV “, thesis presented in
university Mouloud MAMMERI of tizi-ouzou.
[8] Jon Adams “Intelligent Systems Wireless Networking”, Motorola Wireless and Broadband
Systems. Available: http://archives.sensorsmag.com/articles/0603/14/.
[9] Jin-Shyan Lee, Yu-Wei Su, and Chung-Chou Shen “A Comparative Study of Wireless
Protocols: Bluetooth, UWB, ZigBee, and Wi-Fi” Conf. of the IEEE Industrial Electronics
Society (IECON) Nov. 5-8, 2007, Taipei, Taiwan.
[10]Niels Hadaschik,”Techniques for UWB-OFDM” Available: http://www.iss.rwth-
aachen.de/Projekte/theo.
[11]Jean-Yves Le Boudec,Ruben Merz,Bozidar Radunovic,Jörg Widmer ”NS-2 (UWB) MAC and
PHY simulator ” Available :http://icawww1.epfl.ch/uwb/ns-2/index.html
[12]Rachid Ennaji “Routing in Wireless Sensor Networks” 978-1-4244-3757-
3/09/$25.00©2009IEEE-School of Science and Engineering- Al Akhawayn University in Ifrane,
Morocco
BOUDHIR ANOUAR ABDELHAKIM, born in FES, Morocco, in1979.Actualy Member of
IEEE since 2009. He received the “Master of Sciences and Technologies” degree in Electrical
Engineering from the university CADI AYYAD of Marrakesh and recently in 2009, the
“Magister in Computer Sciences Systems and Networks” degree From the University
ADBELMALEK ESSAADI of Tangier. He is currently working toward the Ph.D. degree with
the Computing and Telecommunications Research Group at Abdelmalek Essaadi University. His
research interests include security and quality of service in wireless sensor networks.
Mohammed BOUHORMA, Prof. Dr. received the “Master degree in Electronics” degree in
1990 from Abdelmalek Essaadi University in Tetuan, Morocco, the “DEA” degree in
Electronics and Telecommunications and the “Doctorat d’Etat” degree in Telecommunications
with honors, respectively, in 1991 and 1995 from the “ENSEEIHT-INPT“ of Toulouse. He is a
Professor of computer sciences and networks at Abdelmalek Essaadi University since 1999.He
was chief of computer sciences department and he is also responsible of the Master titled
Computer Sciences Systems and Computers.Prof. BOUHORMA has supervised several Ph D
and Masters Theses and has been the principal investigator and the project manager for several
international research projects dealing with different research topics concerned with his research interests mentioned
above.
Mohamed Ben Ahmed was born in Al-Hoceima, Morocco, in December19, 1979. He received
the “Master of Science and Technology” degree in Computer Sciences ,the “DESA” degree in
Telecommunications, and the "PhD" degree in Computer Sciences and Telecommunications
respectively, in 2002, 2005 and 2010 from Abdelmalek Essaadi University in Tetuan, Morocco.
He is currently a Professor Assistant in Abdelmalek Essaadi University. His research interests
include multi-Bands antenna and SAR calculation.
El Brak SAID, born in Ksar Kbir, Morocco, in1979. He received the DESA degree in Electrical Engineering
from the university ABDELMALEK ESSADI of Tetouan. Currently he is working toward the Ph.D. degree
with the Computing and Telecommunications Research Group at Abdelmalek Essaadi University. His research
interests include Ad hoc and sensor networks

THE UWB SOLUTION FOR MULTIMEDIA TRAFFIC IN WIRELESS SENSOR NETWORKS

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THE UWB SOLUTION FOR MULTIMEDIA TRAFFIC IN WIRELESS SENSOR NETWORKS