2013 XXIV International Conference on
Information, Communication and Automation Technologies (ICAT)
October 30 November 01, 2013, Sarajevo, Bosnia and Herzegovina
Predictive Monitoring of Train Wagons Conditions
Using Wireless Network Technologies
Mirko Franceschinis, Francesco Mauro, Claudio
Pastrone, Maurizio A. Spirito
Pervasive Technologies (PerT) Area
Istituto Superiore Mario Boella (ISMB)
Turin, Italy
AbstractPredictive monitoring of train wagons can allow to
anticipate possible malfunctioning due to wear and avoid
potential accidents. In this paper some network architectures
adopting low-power wireless communication technologies are
introduced. A performance comparison is provided based on ns-2
simulation results, suggesting that the combined use of WSN and
WiFi in a hierarchical architecture is adequate for long trains
with several coaches and a large number of sensing nodes.
Keywordscondition-based monitoring; railway scenarios;
wireless sensors; ns-2 simulations
I. INTRODUCTION AND MOTIVATION
Passengers trains and, even more, freight cars cover long
distances during the span of their railway life. National and
international railway legislation exists which imposes periodic
checks of railway carriages conditions and the appropriate
maintenance in railways workshops. Nonetheless the persistent
monitoring of wagons conditions finalized to anticipate
possible malfunctioning caused by wear and to avoid potential
accidents represents an added value. This concept is known as
condition-based monitoring.
The monitoring is made possible by the presence of sensors
installed on bearings positioned along the wheel-axle of the
several bogies and coaches composing a train. Bearings
deployed in axle-box collect acceleration samples which,
opportunely correlated and fused, allow to derive real time
information about the bogie state in terms of stability. Beside
accelerometer values, temperature readings are of interest too
since overheating of bearings could compromise the correct
functioning and, definitively, the bogie solidity.
Bearings for railway bogie equipped with sensors already
exist which provide continuous time analogue signals.
However, the data communication is enabled by a wired
system and, similarly, the system energy requirements force the
bearings to be inline powered. The challenge, now, is instead to
realize a wireless communication system whose nodes are
powered by energy harvesting solutions. A wireless system is
desirable for costs reduction: installation and maintenance are
simple and economic.
Definitively, the system we have in mind can be described
as follows. It consists of a number of sensors deployed in the
carriage and able to capture, while the train is moving, physical
978-1-4799-0431-0/13/$31.00 2013 IEEE
Mario Rossi
Railway & Off-Highway Business Unit
SKF Industrie S.p.A.
Airasca (Turin), Italy
quantities like vibrations and temperature whose cross-analysis
allows to determine the state of the carriage and estimate the
probability of faults within a certain timeline. The sensors are
autonomous for energy provisioning, assuming they are
powered by specific harvester recovering energy from the
environment. Sensor data locally collected by sensing nodes
are finally transmitted via radio communication to a gathering
center. Several requirements in terms of bandwidth, radio
channel capacity, energy consumption, data security and
devices physical robustness have to be considered. In this
work, we focus our attention on communication aspects, which
will be presented and analyzed in major detail in section IV
devoted to proposed system architectures. Before, section II
lists the main system requirements, in particular concerning
data management and communication, and section III reviews
the state of the art about wireless (particularly WSN-based)
monitoring systems in railway scenarios. Simulation results
involving the proposed architectures are illustrated and
commented in section V. Section VI concludes the paper.
II. MAIN SYSTEM REQUIREMENTS
The sensing nodes integrated with bearings and positioned
in axle-box must satisfy a set of physical restrictions in terms
of sizes and deployment, as well as covers of adequate
materials for device protection. Geometrical features also
concern carriage shape and train composition. Fig. 1 depicts the
shape of a real passenger coach, and the reported dimensions
are used as inputs in the simulated scenario.
Fig. 1. A single carriage and, quoted, its dimensions in length.
More important for communication system design are those
requirements concerning temperature and acceleration data
sampling. Approximately, updated temperature readings should
be available about every minute while older samples than four
or five minutes are useless for application purposes.
Acceleration data related to vibrations require to be collected
much more frequently than temperature values since only long
sequences of samples allow to perform frequency analysis and A. Wireless technologies
then derive the bearings status (e.g., damage or wear). 1) IEEE 802.11
Another requirement is communication robustness against Throughout the years several proposals of the IEEE
possible interferences and disturbs caused by devices using working group on wireless local area networks have become
other wireless communication technologies in the same official IEEE 802.11 standards. They define radically different
frequency band. Data security and integrity are other relevant Physical (PHY) layers while keeping the Medium Access
issues, whose impact on the system design is in terms of Control (MAC) layer, based on carrier sense multiple access
augmented overhead for data cyphering and times for security (CSMA) approach, substantially unvaried. A list of IEEE
protocols execution. Further system primary requirements 802.11 standards is reported in TABLE I. along with the most
concern energy provisioning through harvesting solutions; relevant quantitative features: the frequency band and the bit-
however, the influence on communication aspects consists in rate, i.e. the channel transmission speed, which represents the
imaging energy saving techniques by switching off the radio of channel capacity of transferring bits (of a packet) once the node
sensing nodes only, while sink nodes are inline powered. has successfully gained the medium access. It is worth
stressing the difference between the bit-rate and the rate at
III. STATE OF THE ART which traffic is actually delivered, both measured in bit per
second (bps). The latter is just a small percentage of the bit-
A technology scouting addressed to real market products rate, and it is compromised by a number of factors like
witnesses that a commercial solution perfectly matching all the overhead due to packet headers, packet queuing delays,
monitoring system features we are interested in does not exist medium access latencies, collisions and possible
today. Closer topics to our target have been investigated within retransmissions. TABLE I. shows that IEEE 802.11n standard
research projects although these efforts have not been is able to guarantee a larger bit-rate in both the frequency bands
concretized yet in really tangible results. We briefly give at respectively 2.4 and 5 GHz.
evidence of those research results that mainly meet the most
relevant requirements and share many features with our target
TABLE I. IEEE 802.11 STANDARDS FEATURES
system.
IEEE Frequency Band Bit-rate
To the best of our knowledge, most of the academic papers Standard [GHz] [Mbps]
Year of release
dealing with wireless monitoring systems applied to railway 802.11 2.4 2 1997
scenarios focus on radio communications along the tracks [1, 802.11a 5 54 1999
2] while just few consider wireless transmission systems inside 802.11b 2.4 11 1999
trains. The interest is usually devoted to the communication 802.11g 2.4 54 2003
between a mobile element, the train, and a static one, the 802.11n 2.4 or 5 600 2009
ground. Communication issues involving passengers trains are
analyzed by a few papers, and mainly in connection with WiFi The IEEE does not test commercial equipment for checking
services. The only academic works concerning WSNs applied the compliance with the standards, thus the interoperability
on board the train for condition based monitoring purposes among devices might not be ensured. The non-profit WiFi
relate to freight trains, often composed of open wagons where Alliance [4] was constituted in 1999 to fill this gap and this
propagation issues loose of importance and are not as event has favored the term WiFi to be commonly used as a
challenging as in passenger trains [2]. Instead, [3] is relevant synonymous of IEEE 802.11x.
since it shares the same objective that has inspired our work,
that is, the use of WSN technology with sensor nodes deployed 2) IEEE 802.15.4
on board passenger trains to continuously monitor the bearings. Designed to enable low-cost short-range bidirectional
However, in that case the interest is mainly devoted to wave wireless communications, IEEE 802.15.4 is a standard aimed at
propagation characteristics around a train in order to derive industrial, scientific and medical (ISM) applications. It
hints for the antenna design and to the possibility of using specifies the PHY and the MAC layers for low-rate wireless
energy scavenging for power supply, while communication personal area networks (LR-WPAN). A first version of the
aspects are neglected. standard [5] was released in October 2003 while in September
2006 a second version was ratified [6]. TABLE II. summarizes
the main IEEE 802.15.4 features.
IV. PROPOSED ARCHITECTURES
After briefly introducing the main features of IEEE 802.11
TABLE II. IEEE 802.15.4 STANDARDS FEATURES
and IEEE 802.15.4, identified as the most appropriate radio
technologies for the mentioned application, we describe Frequency Band
Nation/Continent
Bit-rate
alternative communication architectures for the target railway [MHz] [kbps]
scenario. Traffic models and coherent different approaches to 868 Europe 20
915 USA 40
sensor sampling, data processing and information delivery are 2400 All (ISM band) 250
introduced and discussed as well. As already mentioned, we 780 China 250
implicitly assume that sensing nodes are constrained in terms 868/915 China 20 40
of energy being powered by some energy harvesting system, 950 Japan 20 100
which however is not a specific issue here.
B. Network architectures supported at the bottom tier where sensing nodes could need
Different system architectures and data management multi-hop routing to communicate with the sink node. In Fig.
schemes have been analyzed to evaluate how well each one fits 3, this is represented by red links which do not always connect
the requirements. A passenger train is composed of directly a sensing node with the sink node, as it happens
approximately ten/twelve coaches: we opt for 12 when running instead in Fig. 2.
simulations. We assume that each coach, as the one depicted in
Fig. 1, hosts 8 different sensing nodes, which must convey the
collected data towards a sink node positioned in the coach at
one side of the train (the locomotive).
Two main communication architectures are presented and
their suitability compared in this paper. The first one combines
IEEE 802.15.4 (WSN) and IEEE 802.11 (WiFi) to form a
Fig. 2. Single-hop WSN within a wagon.
hierarchical two-tier architecture. Each coach globally includes
9 nodes: 8 sensing nodes and 1 sink node. Sensing nodes
deliver sensor data packets to the sink node in the same coach,
leveraging on WSN communication. The sink nodes associated
with the 12 coaches transparently forward the received packets
to the final recipient, the sink node positioned in the
locomotive at one extremity of the train. The communication
among sink nodes is based on WiFi technology. Sink nodes
thus expose two radio interfaces: a WSN chip to interact with Fig. 3. Multi-hop WSN within a wagon.
the WSN section and a WiFi card to send/receive packets
finally destined to the system data collector. Summarizing, two 3) Flat mesh architecture
communication tiers characterize this system architecture: The flat mesh architecture is depicted in Fig. 4. Considering
First/Bottom tier, for WSN communication within each 12 coaches, the system is composed of 96 sensing nodes
coach, between sensing nodes and the sink node; organized in a large multi-hop IEEE 802.15.4 network. A
Second/Upper tier, involving WiFi communication unique sink node is positioned in the locomotive at the
among sink nodes. extremity of the train.

Two versions of the two-tier architecture are considered,

depending on the WSN network topology: mesh, if multiple
hops are necessary to make communicate a sensing node with
the sink node; star, if the sink node is in the radio coverage area
of every sensing node and a single-hop suffices.
The second architecture regards instead a flat mesh
architecture, where only WSN communication technology is
considered. Differently from the double-tier architecture, a
unique sink node exists, deployed in the locomotive, instead of
12 sink nodes. The sensing nodes, whose total number is still
equal to 12 * 8 = 96 (number of coaches times the number of
sensing nodes per coach), communicate with each other
through multi-hop paths dynamically built in the mesh
topology, pursuing the final aim of reaching the sink node.
1) Hierarchical two-tier architecture with single-hop WSN
In Fig. 2, each blue rectangle represents a coach, as
indicated by the stylized picture over the arrows. Small white
circles are sensing nodes which send packets to the sink node,
indicated as GW, standing for Gateway, due to its role. A star
topology is considered for WSN network routing: the radio
coverage allows each sensing node to reach directly, without
any packet forwarding, the sink node. For this reason we call
this architectural configuration Hierarchical two-tier
architecture with single-hop WSN. Sinks instead form an
IEEE 802.11 ad hoc network.
2) Hierarchical two-tier architecture with multi-hop WSN
Fig. 3 is pretty similar to Fig. 2. Indeed the same
communication technologies are used, but a mesh topology is
Fig. 4. Flat mesh architecture.
C. Data management schemes
The monitoring and communication system can be founded
on different data management approaches, which correspond to
equally different traffic generation models. Deciding which one
is the most adequate depends on many aspects, e.g. the nature
and characterization of the sensor reading. Basic principles are
described below.
Sample and transmit is the simplest approach. Each sensor
reading, encapsulated in a packet, is immediately transmitted
via radio to the system sink. To increase channel utilization
efficiency, consecutive samples can be stored as long as a
maximum-size data packets can be prepared. Sensing nodes are
merely samplers and aggregators while they are not able to
process data at all. Data processing operations are executed in a
centralized fashion, locally at the sink node. This approach is
responsible for a periodic generation of a constant amount of
traffic so that, in the simulation environment, it has been
associated to a constant bit rate (CBR) traffic model.
Process, fuse and transmit indicates the strategy of
continuously sampling the sensor signal while, parallel,
performing local processing of long data bursts by means of
filtering/fusion algorithms, so to send summarized contents.
Transmission periodicity and amount of data processed before
a transmission are parameters to be set, even dynamically,
based on optimization purposes. Sensing nodes are required to
perform onerous data processing and run complex fusion
algorithms taking advantage of significantly smaller amount of
generated traffic. Due to limitation in paper size, our simulation
scenarios only consider the sample and transmit approach and
ignore the process, fuse and transmit strategy which is left for
future in-depth analysis.
V. SIMULATION RESULTS
The alternative communication architectures presented in
the previous section have been compared via simulation
methodology. This section presents a short introduction to ns-2
[7] along with the simulation parameters of main interest for
our purposes, defines the metrics at the basis of the
performance comparison and finally illustrates the achieved
results.
A. Introduction to ns-2
Ns-2 [7] is an open source discrete event simulator targeted
at networking research. It supports a very large set of protocols
over both wired and wireless networks and includes the
implementation of a great variety and heterogeneity of models.
An object oriented script language, called OTcl, is used for
defining simulation conditions by setting as desired a list of
parameters which depend on the scenario.
Ns-2 is still very popular, although originally designed
during the early nineties, being a stable and trustworthy
simulator. As reminded elsewhere in the paper, one of the main
ns-2 drawbacks today is the difficulty of associating more than
just one communication interface with a single device, in
contrast with real devices currently used like smartphones and
with the IoT paradigm.
B. Ns-2 simulation parameters
Ns-2 allows to set a wide set of simulation parameters,
pertaining to various aspects. We mention the most relevant
ones, according to the simulation scenarios of our interest:
nodes deployment, the position being defined by three
spatial coordinates
time duration of the simulation trial
models parameters for data packets generation
propagation model parameters
the communication technology, involving both PHY
and Link/MAC layers
node transmission power
device receiver sensitivity
frequency band adopted by the communication
technology
channel width in the selected frequency band
Some of these parameters are kept unvaried from one
simulation to another. On the contrary others are tuned to
achieve specific scenario conditions like the induced topology.
We discuss how we set up some of them in the simulations.
The simulation duration is calculated long enough to
provide different guarantees. First, at least 1000 data packets
are transmitted by each source node, to enhance the statistic
reliability of performance results. Secondly, it is checked that a
transitory phase of network behavior represents a very small
fraction of the whole simulation test and that ergodic
conditions hold during the steady state phase.
The Free Space propagation model, which only depends on
the distance between nodes, is adopted. The Two Ray Ground
propagation model is ignored since in the scenario conditions
induced by the train dimensions reported in Fig. 1 it exactly
coincides with the Free Space model: at 2.4 GHz, a frequency
band shared by IEEE 802.15.4 and IEEE 802.11, the distance
between the sink node and any sensing node is smaller than the
cross-over distance, a threshold in the propagation
mathematical equation. The Shadowing propagation model is
instead too restrictive and setting the related parameters path
loss exponent and shadowing deviation as suggested by the
scenario environment characterization does not allow the nodes
to communicate at all.
Nodes transmission power, communication technology and
receiver sensitivity are changed according to the scenario under
test: transmission power is increased if a star topology is
desired and decreased to force a mesh topology.
Nodes deployment determines nodes positioning affecting
the network topology. We consider the railway scenario
described in section IV.B: a train composed of 12 coaches each
one hosting 8 sensing nodes, one for each bearing. A
hierarchical two-tier architecture requires a sink node per
coach, thus resulting in 9 nodes for coach, 8 sensing nodes and
the sink node. The network animator NAM can help by
providing a 2D representation of the scenario. For instance,
Fig. 5 represents a NAM screenshot of a single coach, where
some flying packets can be observed beside the 9 nodes. The 8
sensing nodes are labeled 1 to 8 and are positioned in
correspondence of the bearings, along the two wagon axis. The
sink node, labeled 0, is located on the right side of the coach.
This deployment is kept the same for any other coach. For a
flat mesh architecture only the coach coincident with the
locomotive contains a total of 9 nodes, including the sink. Any
other coach only hosts 8 sensing nodes, and no sink.
Fig. 5. NAM: the node deployment in a coach according to the hierarchical
two-tier architecture.
 Ns-2 provides several traffic generators. The simplest one,
and the only one considered in the simulations results
presented in this paper, is the CBR traffic model, able to
simulate a source of packets periodically transmitted. It is
based on two input parameters whose combined tuning allows
to set out the traffic load as desired: the transmission interval
(TI), i.e., the period between two distinct consecutive packets
generated by the same sensing node, and the packet size.
C. Performance metrics
Simulation trials have been carried out to evaluate network
performance, discuss adequacy of each solution highlighting
pros and cons, finally identify and select the most appropriate
network topology and overall architecture able to meet the
requirements. Performance metrics taken into consideration
concern latency, number of transmissions and packet loss
probability. The respective definitions are better detailed in the
following.
The latency is intended on a per packet basis. The latency
of a packet is defined as the time period elapsed from the
instant when the packet is generated at the application layer of
the source node to the instant when the same packet is
delivered to the application layer of the final recipient node. In
ns-2, these two time instants are associated with two specific
events, marked as AGT (agent) and logged in the trace file
available at the end of the simulation, when an enough large
number of packets will be collected. A pdf (probability
distribution function) of latencies can then be built by suitably
dividing into disjointed sub-intervals (bins) the range of
experienced latencies. Statistical moments like mean value
(first order) and variance (correlated with the second order) can
be calculated.
Similarly to the latency, the number of transmissions is a
metric associated with a single packet. It is defined as the total
number of transmissions a packet has experienced from the
first transmission by the original source node to the final
delivery to the sink node. In the most general scenario, a multi-
hop network where packet losses can occur on a link basis, a
new transmission can happen due to two different reasons. If
the MAC layer supports link-based acknowledgments and
consequent retransmissions, as it happens for IEEE 802.15.4, a
transmission can be triggered by a Time-Out expiration.
However, even the forwarding of a packet by an intermediate
node along the route from source to sink node represents a new
packet transmission.
The third performance metric, packet loss probability, is
defined, for each end-to-end pair of source-destination (the
latter is always the sink node), as the ratio between the number
of data packets originally generated by the source node but
never delivered to the sink node and the total number of data
packets originally generated by the source node. Differently
from the two previous metrics, just a single probability value
can be computed for each sensing node at the end of a
simulation. Aggregation is clearly possible, thus resulting in
network-based packet loss probability with respect to the many
per node-based packet loss probabilities.
D. Performance evaluation
In this section the simulation results achieved for the
different system architectures and scenarios described in
section IV are presented. CBR traffic model is used and the
only parameter kept unvaried in all the simulations is the
packet size, selected equal to 96 bytes in order to avoid
fragmentation. Hence the resulting offered traffic only depends
on the TI value. When running simulations, larger TI values
corresponding to lower traffic loads were initially set while
shorter transmission intervals and higher traffic loads were
gradually chosen until overload conditions were obtained and
the actual system capacity was identified. When the generation
rate of new packets by source nodes exceeds a certain
threshold, buffers occupation locally at nodes tends to rapidly
increase until packet discards and losses consequently follow.
Roughly speaking, system instability conditions are reached.
1) Hierarchical two-tier architecture with single-hop WSN
As mentioned in section V.A the concurrent simulation of
two (or more) different technologies is not possible in ns-2,
which does not conceive multi-radio devices. The trick to
elude the problem is based on the idea to decompose the
analysis, by simulating earlier the IEEE 802.15.4 section of the
network and, subsequently, the Wi-Fi part which, in some way,
receives the output of the IEEE 802.15.4 simulation as its own
input.
At the bottom tier, an IEEE 802.15.4 network rules a single
coach. The simulations have been carried out with the standard
parameters set in ns-2 for the IEEE 802.15.4 communication
technology. The node transmission power has been set to make
each sensing node in the sink node radio coverage thus
enabling a star topology. Any sensing node is representative for
all the other network nodes in terms of average performance.
If TI is set equal to 0.4 seconds the aggregate network
packet loss probability is negligible: 0.001. Very rare loss
events are reasonably caused by some queues overflow or
temporary node overload, such that some packet is dropped or
not received. Fig. 6 and Fig. 7 respectively display the pdf of
latency and number of transmissions, aggregated on all sensing
nodes. The latency is very low although extremely rare samples
up to around 3000 milliseconds occur, but are cut in the plot to
better display the part of the curve where the 99.9% of samples
are concentrated. The number of transmissions is more
frequently equal to one, rare retransmissions events are
coherent with the negligible but not null packet loss
probability.
Fig. 8 is a latency curve with the same semantics as Fig. 6
but specifically referring to sensing node 1, the furthest from
the sink node (see Fig. 5). The plot shows that retransmissions
occasionally occur causing longer latencies. Nonetheless, as
expected for a star topology, the performance of a sensing node
is in line with the network aggregate performance. The same
holds for the number of transmissions, not reported here.
 Network: Latency for received packets node. Concerning the number of transmissions, Fig. 10
0.5
witnesses a decreasing rate following a negative exponential
0.45
fall where values from 1 to 5 are remarkable.
0.4
Sensing node 1, the most distant from the sink node,
0.35
experiences high latency values, quite commonly reaching 2
0.3 seconds and sometimes overpassing the barrier of 4 seconds.
The related graph is omitted since quite specular to the
pdf

0.25

0.2
correspondent network aggregate. Similar comments regard the
number of transmissions.
0.15
Network: Latency for received packets
0.1

0.05 0.6

0
0 5 10 15 20 25 30 35 40 45 50
0.5
Latency (ms)

0.4
Fig. 6. Star topology TI = 0.4 s Aggregated latency.

pdf
0.3
Network: Transmissions (including the first) for received packets
1
0.2
0.9

0.8
0.1

0.7
0
0.6 0 1000 2000 3000 4000 5000 6000
Latency (ms)
pdf

0.5

0.4
Fig. 9. Star topology TI = 0.1 s Aggregated latency.
0.3
Network: Transmissions (including the first) for received packets
0.2 1

0.1 0.9

0 0.8
1 2 3 4 5
Transmissions 0.7

0.6
Fig. 7. Star topology TI = 0.4 s Aggregated number of transmissions.
pdf

0.5

Node 1: Latency for received packets 0.4

0.35
0.3

0.3 0.2

0.1
0.25
0
1 2 3 4 5 6 7 8 9
0.2 Transmissions
pdf

0.15
Fig. 10. Star topology TI = 0.1 s Aggregated number of transmissions.
0.1
2) Hierarchical two-tier architecture with multi-hop WSN
0.05 A mesh topology inside a coach is forced when not all of
the sensing nodes lie in the radio coverage range of the sink
0
0 10 20 30 40 50 60 node. In ns-2, this scenario can be easily achieved by setting
Latency (ms) the transmission power smaller than the threshold value which
guarantees a star topology. The communication among sensing
Fig. 8. Star topology TI = 0.4 s Node 1 latency. nodes and the sink deployed in the same coach exploits multi-
hop routing protocols like AODV [8], whose implementation is
Reducing TI to 0.1 seconds brings to a proportional made available in ns-2. It is worth noting that, in presence of a
increase of the traffic load. The tangible effect is an aggregate mesh topology, the number of transmissions experienced by a
packet loss probability reaching the impacting value of 0.454. packet results from two distinct events: retransmissions driven
Fig. 9 shows that, not so infrequently, some latency values are by link losses or packet discard at queues; and, packet
extremely high, comprised between 1 and 3 seconds, forwarding at intermediate relay nodes in accordance with
sometimes even larger. Very often, this is the result of long multi-hop routing.
queues and consequently long waiting/service time locally at a
 Similarly to what happens with the star topology scenario,
the traffic load in correspondence of TI equal to 0.4 seconds is
not high enough to overload the system. The average packet
loss probability is again negligible, specifically equal to 0.003.
As reported in Fig. 11 the latency samples are mostly
concentrated in the interval [0;50] milliseconds and just a
minor part of them is comprised between 25 and 50
milliseconds. However some isolated sample suffers from
latencies even close to 500 milliseconds. Fig. 12 shows that
almost half of the packets needs just one transmission, while
one or two additional transmissions occur on the average for
the remaining 50% of packets.
Network: Latency for received packets
0.7
1, relate to received packets only, in this scenario just a
minority. The performances strictly depend on the node
position. Packets generated by sensing node 1 experience 4 to 6
transmissions, responsible for the particular shape of the
latency pdf, resembling a uniform distribution on specific short
ranges of values, probably due to network mechanisms that
make periodical some impacting events (see Fig. 15).
Network: Latency for received packets
0.25
0.2

pdf
0.15
0.6

0.5 0.1

0.4 0.05
pdf

0.3
0
0 5 10 15
Latency (ms)
0.2

0.1 Fig. 13. Mesh topology TI = 0.1 s Aggregated latency.

0 Network: Transmissions (including the first) for received packets

0 50 100 150 200 250 300 350 400 450 500 1
Latency (ms)
0.9

Fig. 11. Mesh topology TI = 0.4 s Aggregated latency. 0.8

0.7
Network: Transmissions (including the first) for received packets
1 0.6
pdf

0.9 0.5

0.8 0.4

0.7 0.3

0.6 0.2
pdf

0.5 0.1

0.4 0
1 2 3 4 5 6 7 8 9
0.3 Transmissions

0.2
Fig. 14. Mesh topology TI = 0.1 s Aggregated number of transmissions.
0.1

0 Node 1: Latency for received packets

1 2 3 4 5 0.18
Transmissions
0.16

Fig. 12. Mesh topology TI = 0.4 s Aggregated number of transmissions. 0.14

Sensing node 1 moves away from the network aggregate 0.12

behavior if the number of transmissions is considered: it is 0.1

pdf

deterministically equal to 3. In terms of latency, samples 0.08

distribution reminds the aggregate one.
0.06
A correct interpretation of Fig. 13 and Fig. 14, referring to
TI set equal to 0.1 seconds, cannot disregard the estimated 0.04

value of network packet loss probability, 0.748, an 0.02

unacceptable performance result associated with long queues, 0

dropped packets, long delays, system overloaded. Latency 0 50 100 150 200 250 300 350 400 450 500
Latency (ms)
values, concentrated in the narrow [0;15] milliseconds range,
and number of transmissions, almost deterministically equal to
Fig. 15. Mesh topology TI = 0.1 s Node 1 latency.
 TABLE III. allows a comparison between star and mesh TABLE IV. FLAT MESH ARCHITECTURE PERFORMANCE RESULTS
topologies. Average refers to all the sensing nodes, Min/ Aggregate Packet Loss Probability
Max to the node with the best/worst performance. When TI is TI [sec]
Min Max Average
about 0.4-0.5 milliseconds a stable and reliable behavior is 120 0.004 1 0.985
assured by both the topologies. As TI decreases the star 60 0.860 1 0.981
topology appears more reliable: 0.454 vs 0.748 is the network 30 0.029 1 0.965
packet loss probability in the two scenarios when TI = 0.1 VI. CONCLUSIONS AND FUTURE WORK
seconds. As expected, the star topology works better; but the
performance gap is slight. Finally, the break-down input traffic The simulation results showed that only a hierarchical
achieved by simulation is just indicative, due to the wide set of architecture integrating WSN and WiFi is able to manage a
uncertainties: relative values are significant, absolute values are monitoring system consisting of tens or hundreds of sensing
not. nodes, i.e., a train composed of ten coaches or more. A flat
mesh architecture would soon result in network collapse since
the traffic load managed by relay sensing nodes is not uniform
TABLE III. STAR AND MESH TOPOLOGIES: A COMPARISON and varies super-linearly from farthest to closest nodes (w.r.t.
Aggregate Packet Loss Probability the sink node). Queues are quickly full of packets, very long
TI
[sec]
Star Mesh delays follow and network resources are inefficiently used due
Min Max Average Min Max Average to uselessly performed work (packets forwarded for a section
0.45 0 0 0 0 0 0 of the path before being dropped).
0.4 0.001 0.003 0.001 0 0.017 0.003
0.3 0.007 0.057 0.039 0 0.933 0.239 This conclusion holds as long as the sample and transmit
0.2 0.150 0.203 0.180 0 0.092 0.012 approach is adopted, which is responsible for high traffic load
0.1 0.365 0.522 0.454 0.001 0.999 0.748 generation if sensors are sampled with high frequency. The
process, fuse and transmit approach could be successful for
3) Hierarchical two-tier architecture: WiFi two basic reasons: first, it can strongly reduce the amount of
The upper tier of the two-tier architecture conceives WiFi data a sensing node sends on the channel; second, a valuable
communication, configured in ad hoc mode. The 12 sinks, one energy saving can derive from the possibility of disabling the
per coach, forward the packets received from sensing nodes radio if data transmissions are less frequent. Conversely, the
belonging to the same coach. Ns-2 provides a WirelessPhyExt drawback is that it could require very powerful but energy
library to ensure a correct WiFi implementation. Sink nodes are consuming processing units. This kind of investigation is the
arranged in a linear topology, equally spaced, and cooperate to first in the list for future work. Ns-2 provides more complex
route packets to the sink node positioned in the locomotive at traffic models than CBR which can be utilized to simulate a
one side of the train. data management coherent with process, fuse and transmit,
e.g. the Exponential ON/OFF model characterized by the
Our goal is to check which technology, IEEE 802.15.4 in alternation of silence (OFF) and activity (ON) periods
the single coach scenario or IEEE 802.11 in the inter-coaches according to negative exponential random variables.
scenario, constitutes the network bottleneck. Considering that Transmissions during an ON period are still in CBR mode.
each WSN sink generates in the WiFi network the equivalent
traffic of 8 sensing nodes, and reminding WSN results, WiFi REFERENCES
simulations have been carried out by varying TI from 450/8 =
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