Energy-Efficient Wireless Communication via ACK Handling Strategies

1. Wireless ACK Collisions Not Considered Harmful Prabal Dutta†, Răzvan Musăloiu-E.‡, Ion Stoica†, Andrea Terzis‡ Computer Science Division† University of California, Berkeley {prabal,istoica}@cs.berkeley.edu Computer Science Department‡ Johns Hopkins University {razvanm,terzis}@cs.jhu.edu HotNets-VII – Calgary, Alberta, Canada – Oct. 6-7, 2008

2. Energy is the critical resource in wireless embedded systems And the radio dominates the power budgeteven at low duty cycles of 1-2% Therefore, the radio is kept mostly off and the trend is to keep it off more Low-Power Listening (idle listening) DC=2.2% R. Szewczyk, A. Mainwaring, J. Polastre, D. Culler, “An Analysis of a Large Scale Habitat Monitoring Application”, ACM SenSys’ 04, November, 2004, Baltimore, MD And there’s growing interest in operation at 0.1% or 0.01%

3. Asynchronous network wakeup 1 2 4 3 5 Listen Q R Listen Node 1 R R Q R Listen Q Listen Q Listen Q R Node 2 Q R Listen Q R Node 3 Q R Listen Q R Node 4 Q R Node 5 frame collision P. Dutta, D. Culler,, S. Shenker, “Procrastination Might Lead to a Longer and More Useful Life”, HotNets-VI, November, 2007, Atlanta, GA

4. Wait, not so fast! Node 5 might receive a response • Power capture: One response has a sufficiently higher power than the sum of the others… and it arrives first • Delay capture: One response frame arrives some time before the remaining ones… and its power is higher than the sum of the others • Message-in-Message capture: Like power capture, but the highest power frame arrives in the middle of another frame transmission and radio detects elevated energy… and the radio does continuous preamble detection • These are a lot of caveats…

5. The Query/Response exchange can be mapped to“acknowledged anycast” semantics 1 2 4 3 5 src=<doesn’t matter> dst=broadcast Node 5 asks all of it neighbors, “should one wake up?” To which, Nodes 2, 3, and 4 all respond, “Yes” (everyone sends back the same response) • A node • Broadcasts (or multicasts) a query packet • Waits to see whether the packet is ACK’ed • By at least one of its neighboring nodes • And stays awake if an ACK is received • But goes to sleep otherwise • And the frame collision is like a multicast “ACK implosion” ACK

6. Outline • Introduction • Implementing “acknowledged anycast” • How well does it work? • How much does it cost? • How could it be used? • What are its limitations?

7. Backcast, an “acknowledged anycast” implementation • Backcast is a link-layer frame exchange • A single radio DATA frame transmission • Triggers zero or more identical ACK frames • Transmitted with tight timing tolerance • So there is minimum inter-symbol interference • And where ACKs collide non-destructively at the initiator D A Responder D A Initiator D A Responder You should be skeptical that this idea might work

8. Backcast using a link-layer DATA/ACK frame exchange Receiver D A Sender D A • Many wireless standards use link-layer automatic ACKs • IEEE 802.11 a/b/g • IEEE 802.15.4 • The DATA/ACK frame turnaround time is tightly-controlled • Creates conditions favorable for power and delay capture • But what should the destination address be? • 802.11 a/b/g: DON’T ACK broadcast or multicast frames • 802.15.4: Standard is silent on ACK-ing broadcast frames • We play with the SRC and DST addresses to get around this

9. Outline • Introduction • Implementing acknowledged anycast • How well does it work? • Under carefully-controlled conditions? • Under typical operating conditions? • How much does it cost? • How could it be used? • What are its limitations?

10. Setup Methodology Platform: Telos mote Protocol: IEEE 802.15.4 Radio: Texas Instruments CC2420 Experiment 8 responder nodes Connect w/ splitter/attenuator Turned on sequentially Transmit 100 packets 125 ms inter-packet interval Log RSSI: received signal strength LQI: chip correlation rate ARR: ACK reception rate Carefully-controlled experiment withequal-power, equal-path delay

11. As the number of colliding ACKsgoes from one to eight… Median RSSI increases logarithmically Median LQI remains nearly constant but is more left-tailed ACK reception rate stays practically constant But, for two nodes, LQI exhibits outliers and a lower median

12. Setup Methodology Platform: Telos mote Protocol: IEEE 802.15.4 Radio: Texas Instruments CC2420 Experiment 12 responder nodes Located in CS Dept testbed Turned on sequentially Transmit 500 packets 125 ms inter-packet interval Vary DATA-ACK turnout time Vary # of preamble bytes Log RSSI: received signal strength LQI: chip correlation rate ARR: ACK reception rate More realistic deployment environment

13. As the number of colliding ACKs go from one to twelve… Chip errors increase slightly ACK reception rate remains at 100% Chip errors increase dramatically ACK reception rate starts at 100% and then falls quickly Chip errors are quite volatile ACK reception rate is variable and volatile Since experiments are identical except for the ACK timing, these results suggest more than just capture is at play

14. Outline • Introduction • Implementing acknowledge anycast • How well does it work? • How much does it cost? • How could it be used? • What are its limitations?

15. The cost of a Backcast can be less than 1 ms for 802.15.4 RXTX turnaround time: 192 µs Max data packet 4.256 ms Responder P A DATA Initiator P A DATA ACK transmission time 352 µs

16. Outline • Introduction • How does it work? • How well does it work? • How much does it cost? • How could it be used? • Asynchronous network wakeup • Low-Power Unicast • Robust Pollcast • What are its limitations?

17. Asynchronous network wakeup: a node might broadcast a wakeup Queryand continue to Listen if it receives a Response 1 2 4 3 5 Listen Q A Listen Node 1 A A Q A Listen Q Listen Q Listen Q A Node 2 DST=0xFFFF SRC=0x0002 Q A Listen Q A Node 3 Q A Listen Q A Node 4 Q A Node 5 P. Dutta, D. Culler,, S. Shenker, “Procrastination Might Lead to a Longer and More Useful Life”, HotNets-VI, November, 2007, Atlanta, GA Backcast

18. Low-Power Unicast Communications DST=0x0002 SRC=0x0001 SEQ=0x23 MAC=0x8002 MAC=0x8002 Node 1 (Sender) Listen P A D P Listen P A D P-CW CW Node 2 (Receiver) D P L P A D P-CW D P A DST=0x8002 SRC=0x0002 DST=0x8002 SRC=0x0002 ACK=0x0023 FRM=0x0001 MAC=0x8002 Node 3 (Sender) Listen P A D P D Backcast frame collision

19. Robust Pollcast MAC=0x8765 Node 1 (Sender) Event Pred Listen P A Node 2 (Receiver) Event Pred Listen P A DST=0xFFFF SRC=0x0002 PRED=elephant MAC=0x8765 DST=0x8765 MAC=0x8765 Node 3 (Sender) Event Pred Listen P A Backcast M. Demirbas, O. Soysal, and M. Hussain, “A Single-Hop Collaborative Feedback Primitive for Wireless Sensor Networks”, INFOCOM’08, April , 2008, Phoenix, AZ

20. Outline • Introduction • Implementing acknowledged anycast • How well does it work? • How much does it cost? • How could it be used? • What are its limitations? • Protocol support • Radio support • Other factors

21. Limitations • Protocol support • Superposition semantically valid for modulation scheme • Auto ACK with tight timing • ACK frames are identical • Radio support • Broadcast auto ACKs • Multicast auto ACKs • Multiple MAC addresses for interface • Auto ACKs based on SRC address filtering • Auto ACKs based on DST address filtering • Other factors • Propagation delay  ΔRTT < ½ symbol time • ACK frames do not cancel at PHY layer • Security  Easy to spoof

22. Backcast • Provides acknowledged anycast semantics • Quickly • Efficiently • More robustly than app-level query/response • Avoids ACK implosion problem • Abstraction enables better implementations • Asynchronous neighbor discovery • Low-power unicast communications • Robust pollcast • …

23. Discussion