2009 World Congress on Computer Science and Information Engineering

A Data Aggregation Model for Underground Wireless Sensor Network

Tong Minming, Niu Jieru, Wang Hu, Liu Xiaowen
College of information and electric engineering, China University of mining and technology
XuZhou, JiangSu221008, China
time. It causes serious consequences if the dynamic
environmental parameters of gas-outburst had not been
detected in time. The rapidity of data aggregation is an
important research emphasis of underground wireless
sensor networks. The environmental data acquired by
underground sensor nodes is related to geographical
location, and it is easy to achieve localization of
sensors, because the most nodes are deployed
manually. So it is an effective method to design an
underground data aggregation model which dividing
sensor nodes into different clusters by location
information, then direct transmitting data packets
between cluster head nodes which manage the data in
clusters. In this way, we can efficiently reduce data
flooding in network and accelerate data aggregating
speed. At present, the typical geographical routing
algorithms are GPSR, DREAM, MECN, GAF, GEAR,
etc. In these protocols localization of sensors are
mainly achieved by GPS device, and their network
topology-aware and mobile abilities are relatively
poor, they cant meet the demand of underground
environment.
Directed Diffusion (DD) is a data-oriented routing
algorithm with good reliability and scalability, it
doesnt need to maintain the global topology, but it has
a deficiency in real-time performance. A data
aggregation model based on this algorithm to
overcome its deficiency by using geographical
information to classified data into grid clusters is
proposed in this paper. The working principle is as
follows: all the nodes in network are determined to be
in different grid clusters by their geographical location
coordinate, and there is a cluster head node within each
cluster. Therefore, all the head nodes form the upper
level of network and the other nodes in clusters form
the lower level. The two levels have different functions
in network. Every sensor node sends monitored data to
the cluster head node which can conduct simple data
fusion and the cluster head node sends the processed
data to the gateway node through the routing paths
established by DD. At last, the gateway node transmits
the data to the control center through the wired
network. As a result of the cluster-based distributed

Abstract
According to the actual environment and condition
of coal mine, we proposed a data aggregation model
for wireless sensor networks to enhance the real-time
performance and the reliability of underground
environment monitoring system. In this model, all
sensor nodes were divided into different grid clusters
by geographical information and the network topology
was composed of two levels. The lower level including
all ordinary nodes was responsible for environment
monitoring and delivered the data to the upper level,
all the cluster head nodes formed the upper level which
took charge of local data collection and establishment
of the routing paths to sink. This paper discussed the
details of this data aggregation model and the
simulation results showed that this data aggregation
model was efficient in cutting redundancy data and
reducing transmission delay. It was suitable to be
applied to the real time monitoring networks in coal
mine.
Keywords: coal mining security, wireless sensor
networks, data aggregation, clustering based on grid

1. Introduction
Wireless sensor networks (WSN) is a self-organized
wireless network composed of a large number of
sensor nodes with the function of data acquisition, data
processing and data communications. Nowadays it has
been gradually applied in many fields such as military,
industry, agriculture, environment monitoring, disaster
relief and the remote controlling of danger region. Now
the situation of coal mine security is serious, and gas
has became the most primary dangerous factor in
security incidents. So applying the technology of WSN
in real-time gas monitoring will overcome the
shortcomings of traditional monitoring network and
help to monitor and prevent coal mine gas accidents.
Underground wireless sensor networks should have
high reliability and scalability. Moreover, it should
provide acceptable real-time performance at the same

978-0-7695-3507-4/08 $25.00 2008 IEEE

DOI 10.1109/CSIE.2009.736

344

routing mechanism, the routing algorithm overcome

the flood routing defects of DD, efficiently cuts the
redundancy data spread in the network and averages
the nodes energy consumption. This model can operate
under two scenarios: periodic enquiries and real-time
alert. It can meet the demand for continuous
monitoring, and it also can respond to some
emergencies such as gas outburst.

its own information about geographical location by

using a certain measurement technique such as RSSI
and can monitor its own energy during the time at
work. Each sensor node can exchange the information
mentioned above with its all neighbor sensor nodes if
necessary.
According to the particularity of the real-time
monitoring networks in coal mine, two kinds of
monitoring scheme is designed. They are periodic
query and automatic alarm in emergencies. When the
control center queries a certain gateway node about the
information on gas concentration in the local network,
the gateway node takes charge of querying grid
clusters through the routing path established by DD
and data aggregation. If there is no danger such as
outburst of gas, a safety message will be transmitted
from the gateway node to the control center. Gateway
nodes query periodically all clusters in regions, the
query packets adopt the naming scheme of DD and the
format can be described as follows:
Type=Date
Interval=200ms
Duration=20s
Destination=53
Query=CH4
Option=0
It means that the gateway node will query the grid
cluster of which coordinate is (5.3) in every 200ms
within 20s. If it is need to query a certain sensor node
in grid cluster, the optional parameter will be set to the
value of nodes geographical location or nodes ID.
If a sensor node detects a rapid variation in gas or
other emergencies, the parameter value of duration will
become meaningless and the sensor node will report
the dangerous data packets to the control center
through the routing path at once.

2. System model
A typical coal mining face is composed with shaft
stations, main haulage way, seam roadway and level
crosscut, and there are different operation sides in each
coal seam. In this way, many different local networks
will form different mining areas. So the local networks
(WSN) and wired backbone network constitute of the
entire system. The local network is responsible for data
collection and data fusion, and there must be a gateway
node as sink in WSN. The wired backbone network
transmits data to the control center. The wireless
sensor nodes in operation measure gas concentration
and environmental parameters and delivery the data to
the cluster head node. So the date is delivered from the
lower level to the upper level. The cluster head nodes
delivery data to the gateway node in local network
through the routing paths established by certain
scheme, then the gateway node connected to the
backbone wired network sends the processed data to
the control center.
The gateway node coordinates the data transmission
of local area network and maintains the routing table.
The local network divides all its sensor nodes into
many virtual grids by geographical location
information to build different clustering structures.
Interests and exploratory data packets only diffuse
among the cluster head nodes. To average energy
consumption, the cluster head node must be changed
regularly. The routing paths will be updated
periodically with DD scheme, and it will not affect the
global routing of the networks when a new election of
cluster head nodes is accomplished or the topological
structure is changed by adding a new node in the
network or the positions of nodes are changed. So the
network has a better network scalability and
robustness.

3.2. Geographical grid cluster

After the deployment of sensor nodes according to
the geographical conditions of coal mine, every sensor
node can be divided into different virtual grid on the
basis of its own geographical location information
(Figure 1), and can communicate with every sensor
nodes in all adjacent grid clusters.

3. Data aggregation scheme

3.1 Overview
To describe the routing algorithm easily, we assume
that all sensor nodes have exactly the same
construction and performance. Every node can obtain

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greatest one in the same grid, its own status flag will be
set to cluster head, and broadcast a cluster head
confirm message to all sensor nodes in the grid. As a
result, the cluster structure is built while the status flag
of all sensor nodes except cluster head is set to
common node after receiving the broadcasting
message.
In order to prevent over-consumption of energy,
sensor nodes serve as cluster head node by turns. If a
cluster head node detects its own value of surplus
energy is lower than the threshold value, a new
election of cluster head will start. The old cluster head
node broadcasts one-hop messages to all common
nodes in its cluster to report the information of their
surplus energy, the node with the greatest value of
surplus energy will be selected as the new cluster head
node and its status flag will be set to cluster head after
receiving the notice message from the old cluster head
node. Then the new election of cluster head is done and
the new cluster structure is built after the old cluster
heads status flag set to common node and all other
common nodes receiving the cluster head confirm
message from the new cluster head node.

Figure 1.Grid partition

The grid size r depends on the communication
radius R of the sensor node. To ensure that each sensor
node in two adjacent grid clusters can communicate
with each other, the possible furthest distance between
two sensor nodes is not greater than R . It can be
described as follows.

r 2 + (2r )2 R , r

R
5

3.3Routing scheme

Then using formula 2, the geographic location

coordinate ( x, y ) can be converted to grid

In DD, the diffusion of interest or exploratory data

packets can inevitably lead to heavy traffic
periodically. In the process of establishing routing
paths based on flooding, every sensor nodes in network
can receiving the data packets and forward them. To
solve this problem, a pre-grid filter is added to the
directed diffusion core. After receiving the interest or
exploratory, the sensor nodes determine its action
according to its own status flag. So the function of the
pre-grid filter is to decide whether the packets should
be discarded or not. Though all the nodes can received
the packets from its neighbor nodes (in the same
cluster or not), only the cluster head nodes forward
these packets to establish routing paths, as shown in
figure 2. After accomplishment of directed diffusion,
the situation that the gradients are established not only
between different cluster head nodes in different grid
clusters but also between cluster head node is
developed. As shown in figure 2, the dashed P is the
final routing path from source node S to the gateway
node.
The control center diffuse interest or exploratory
data packets to gateway nodes periodically to built or
update the routing paths of the whole network. It
determines an optimal path according to the latency or
additional information of packets replicas and send
reinforcement messages through this path, the routing
paths from source sensor nodes to gateway nodes is

coordinate ( X , Y ) .The function Int () in formula 2 is

an integral function.

x
y
X = Int ( ), Y = Int ( )
r
r

The process is the first step occurred in initializing

the network, all sensor nodes save grid coordinates by
computing the geographic location to establish grid
clusters. During the operation, the sensor nodes can
detect location information regularly. If a certain
node's location has changed, the grid coordinate will be
recalculated correspondingly and be ready to join the
new grid cluster.
Each sensor in a grid cluster has three status flags
undefined, common node and cluster head to indicate
its role in the cluster. In the initial stage sensor nodes
status flag is set to undefined, a sensor node will
broadcast a clustering message to all its own neighbor
nodes (1 hop) to notice them to exchange their status
flags and grid coordinates in a random moment after
determining all sensor nodes grid coordinate. The
exchanging message should be in the form of (node ID,
grid coordinate, surplus energy, status flag), after
exchanging clustering messages, each sensor node can
know which neighbor nodes are in the same grid and
know all values of surplus energy of them. If a sensor
node finds that its value of surplus energy is the

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data packets received by the gateway node to the

quantity of data packets sent from the source data
node. When taking NS-2 for arithmetic simulation, we
take local network as simulation object and use node
model of Ad hoc network. The node communication
radius is about 35mm, so the grid size is 15m.
The transmission interval of interest is set to 30
seconds, and the transmission interval of exploratory
data is 60 seconds. Each source data node transmits
environmental data twice per second.

built. As only the cluster head nodes broadcast the

interest or exploratory data packets of DD, so the upper
level will assume the most communication traffic when
establishing network routing based on DD. Apparently,
the routing communication traffic of the whole
network will be decreased after clustering.
Cluster head nodes coordinate all other nodes
working mode which are in the different virtual grid,
and distribute data sending time gaps. In order to
reduce the network energy consumption, we need to
turn off some redundant nodes in cycle. All nodes have
three states: monitoring, working and sleeping. When
it works in monitoring state, if the gas concentration
does not have any abnormal condition or it does not
receive a query command, it turns into sleeping mode,
otherwise it enters working mode, measuring and
transmitting monitored data.

Figure 3.Average transmission delay

Figure2.The routing scheme based on

geographic grid cluster

4Performance analysis and conclusion

Figure 4.Average transceiver ratio

According to the particularity of coal mine, a data

aggregation model aiming at acceleration of data
aggregation and reduction of data redundancy is
proposed. So the model can be evaluated by two
performance index, average transmission delay and
average transceiver ratio.
The average transmission delay is the average timeconsuming that data packets were transmitted from the
source node to the sink node in simulation, which is
used to calculate the speed of data aggregation. The
average transceiver ratio is the ratio of the quantity of

Figure 3 is the result of the average transmission

delay, which indicates that the average transmission
delay is obvious lower than DD without clustering as
network size getting bigger. After clustering by
geographical location, diffusion data packets suffer
much less collision and result in lower delay. Figure 4
is the variety of average transceiver ratio, which
indicates that there is not obvious change for the
average transceiver ratio as network size getting

347

Annual ACM/IEEE international Conference on

Mobile Computing and networking[C], 1998:76-84

bigger, but it has a falling trend when using DD

without clustering.
The data aggregation model based two levels for
underground wireless sensor network makes full use of
geographical location information to built clustering
structures with grids. On this basis, the routing scheme
based on DD can not only cutting the redundancy data
and reducing transmission delay and communication
traffic but also make the model have the better
reliability and scalability.

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5. Acknowledgement

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Energy Aware Routing: A Recursive Data
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This project is supported by the National Science

Foundation of China (Grant No. 50534050) and
National Project 863(2007AA06Z114).

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