Thesis subject :
Energy saving in wireless sensors and actuators networks

Laboratory Heudiasyc UMR CNRS 7253
University of Technology of Compiègne
60200 Compiègne, France Heudiasyc

PhD Advisor
Prof. Abdelmadjid Bouabdallah (Advisor), Prof. Fréderic Marin (co-advisor)

Context of the thesis
A wireless Sensor Network (WSN) is a wireless network which is composed of a set of tiny autonomous sensor nodes with sensing, computation, and wireless communication capabilities. The purpose of such networks is to collect information issued from a controlled environment or a target object and then send it to a base station usually called the sink. Actuators are used to execute some actions in response to requests sent by the supervision stations. Because of size factor and cost considerations, wireless sensor networks suffer from resource constraints including energy, memory, computation power and communication bandwidth and range. Nowadays, wireless sensor networks are increasingly used in numerous fields such as military, medical, industrial and environmental sectors ; they are more and more involved in several sensitive applications which require sophisticated and reliable services, so the maximization of network nodes lifetime.
Energy saving in Wireless sensors/actuators networks is one of the main challenging research problems for which new development of efficient solutions are needed. This problem can be tackled from different sides : development of new energy saving communication protocols, energy saving coverage optimization, introduction of mobile sensors/actuators for energy saving, and so on.

PhD thesis description
The objective of this thesis is study the energy problem in the context of wireless sensor and actuators networks by taking into consideration application domains (healthcare, mechanical, etc) in order to determine the best approach to optimize the network energy consumption. This thesis will be developed following these steps :
- Study of the energy problem in WSN/actuators by taking into consideration two application domain requirements (healthcare and mechanical)
- Classification of existing solutions and highlight their weakness
- Development of new efficient solution for these environments
- Performance evaluation of the proposed solutions
- Development of a platform as proof of concept for the obtained solutions

Candidate’s profile
The candidate should have a Master degree in computer science/engineering. A strong knowledge of WSN, Internet and communication protocols, simulation tool would be an asset. Strong communications skills in English are also required.

Documents required to apply
send to madjid.bouabdallah@hds.utc.fr
• Curriculum vitae
• Master and/or Engineering degree grades and marks
• Letter(s) of recommendation