Data Gathering in Wireless Sensor Networks using IPFIX under Contiki

 Today data collection becomes more and more important. Usually wireless sensor networks (WSNs) are used, which represent an ad-hoc network with very constraint hardware (e.g. RAM 10kb, 3 AA batteries). The measured data is transmitted to a central gateway, which is connected to an infrastructure for further analysis purposes.

In general, the transmitted data consists of meta information and data itself send out together in one packet. In order to reduce the overhead in the network and to save resource it is interesting to modify the packet structure. An interesting protocol from IP networks is the „IP Flow Information Export“ (IPFIX) protocol, which is a push-protocol and a template-based design. The latter is most interesting for WSNs, because it separates the meta information and the data in different packets. The meta information stays the same in the system, and therefore is repeated periodically. The data refers to this meta information with an ID and is send in separated packets.

For WSNs two main operating systems are popular – Contiki and TinyOS. At the department an infrastructure already exist, which includes the implementation of IPFIX under the operating system TinyOS (called TinyIPFIX). We are now searching for YOU to implement the existing TinyIPFIX version under the C-based operating system Contiki in order to extend the application pool by other sensor hardware only supported by Contiki. Further tasks will be to evaluate and document your implementation, as well as integrate it into the existing user friendly CoMaDa-GUI.

Depending on thesis type and YOUR preferences the topic scope can be adjusted. Just come over and discuss with me.

Publication:

T.Kothmayr, C. Schmitt, L. Braun, and G. Carle: Gathering Sensor Data in Home Networks with IPFIX. In Proceedings of the 7th European Conference on Wireless Sensor Networks (EWSN), Coimbra, Portugal, February 2010, http://dx.doi.org/10.1007/978-3-642-11917-0_9