Hierarchical Architecture for Multi-Technology Wireless Sensor Networks for Critical Infrastructure Protection

A hierarchical architecture for wireless sensor network (WSN) consisting of heterogeneous devices is introduced in this paper. Proposed architecture is well suited for surveillance of critical infrastructures and it is designed to be scalable for various different scenarios. Low power consumption will be achieved by utilizing a wake-up radio concept which enables to keep the most power consuming devices at the sleep mode as long as possible. A WSN OpenAPI gateway (WOAG) component of the architecture supports high scalability by enabling data collection and sharing from networks deployed using multiple different technologies. WOAG facilitates WSNs information availability to local and remote end-users. Analytical energy efficiency optimization model for the architecture is developed. Results show energy efficiency gains that can be achieved with the proposed wake-up concept based intelligent hierarchical architecture design. For low event frequency case the energy efficiency is found to be one order of magnitude better than for duty cycle (1%) radio based network.