Date of Award

Fall 2006

Document Type

Thesis

Degree Name

Master of Science (MS)

Department

Electrical & Computer Engineering

Program/Concentration

Computer Engineering

Committee Director

Lee A. Belfore II

Committee Member

Min Song

Committee Member

Stephen Olariu

Call Number for Print

Special Collections LD4331.E55 E56 2006

Abstract

A large amount of research has been done in the area of wireless sensor networks (WSN), but not much work has been done in modeling the fault tolerance and reliability of these networks. In this thesis, the fault tolerance of a WSN to node failures is studied and an analytical reliability model of the network is derived. A valid reliability model of a network could reveal an estimate of the network's performance before it is deployed.

A wireless sensor network was modeled as a k-out-of-n system and a generic fault tolerant framework for the network in terms of node losses was given. An analytical model was derived to model the reliability of the network due to energy loss. The network model consisted of several clusters of nodes that communicate to a central sink. The reliability of each node was modeled as a Poisson distribution whereas the failure rate for each node was defined in terms of the work load and energy consumption of the node. By studying the details of the network infrastructure, the arrival rate of workload to each node was modeled. The cluster was modeled as a parallel system of sensor nodes and the failure distribution of the cluster was derived in terms of the node's failure distributions. Another reliability model was derived using a generating function polynomial that shows the reliability of the network at any point in time.

A simulation of a wireless sensor network was performed using C++ and Matlab. The simulation results and the analytical model were compared and the results of the analytical model closely matched the simulation results for the time duration that the network was defined. This proved the validity of the analytical model,

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DOI

10.25777/2x5z-x685

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