Showing papers presented at "IFIP Wireless Days in 2010"

Content Centric Networking in tactical and emergency MANETs

Abstract: Reliable and secure content distribution in a disruptive environment is a critical challenge due to high mobile and lossy channels. Traditional IP networking and wireless protocols tend to perform poorly. In this paper, we propose Content Centric Networking (CCN) for emergency wireless ad hoc environments. CCN is a novel communication architecture capable to access and retrieve content by name. This new approach achieves scalability, security, and efficient network resource management in large scale disaster recovery and battlefield networks. Existing Internet CCN schemes cannot be directly applied to wireless mobile ad hoc networks due to different environments and specific limitations. Thus, we must extend the CCN architecture by introducing features and requirements especially designed for disruptive networks. We prove feasibility and performance gain of the new design via implementation and experimentation.

CAODV: Routing in mobile ad-hoc cognitive radio networks

Abstract: This paper deals with the routing in cognitive mobile ad hoc networks. We propose to modify the widely adopted Ad-hoc On-demand Distance Vector (AODV) protocol [1] in order to assure its functionality in the considered scenario. The resulting protocol, referred to as the Cognitive Ad-hoc On-demand Distance Vector (CAODV) protocol, has been designed according to three guidelines: i) to avoid regions of primary users activity during both route formation and packet discovery without requiring a dedicated common control channel; ii) to perform a joint path and channel selection at each forwarder to minimize the route cost; iii) to take advantage of the availability of multiple channels to improve the overall performances. The performances of CAODV have been evaluated by means of numerical simulations, and the experimental results confirm its effectiveness for cognitive mobile ad hoc networks.

Analyzing the potential of cooperative Cognitive Radio technology on inter-vehicle communication

Abstract: Recent studies demonstrate that Cognitive Radio (CR) technology can increase the spectrum efficiency of wireless systems, provided that the activity of primary users (PUs) must be carefully protected. For this reason, several sensing schemes leverage the cooperation among nodes to increase the accuracy of PU detection. In this paper, we propose to employ the CR principles in the vehicular environment in order to increase the spectrum opportunities for inter-vehicle communication (IVC). We propose a cooperative sensing and spectrum allocation scheme through which vehicles can share information about spectrum availability of TV channels on their path, and dynamically decide the channels to use on each road segment. Moreover, we investigate the role of vehicular mobility in the cooperation process, which might allow a vehicle to know in advance the spectrum availability on future locations along its path. Simulation results confirm the ability of our scheme in providing robust PU detection under fading conditions, and analyze the impact of some vehicular networks characteristics into the operations of CR systems.

Randomized channel hopping scheme for anti-jamming communication

Abstract: Jamming attacks have been recently studied as wireless security threats disrupting reliable RF communication in a wireless network. By emitting noise-like signals arbitrarily on the shared wireless medium, a jammer can easily disturb the network. Countermeasures such as Frequency-Hopping Spread Spectrum enable nodes to avoid the jamming attacks by hopping over multiple channels. However, these solutions require pre-key establishment before data transmission, which in turns introduces several constraints. In order to solve the problem, this paper proposes a novel Quorum Rendezvous Channel Hopping (QRCH) scheme1. Nodes are able to hop over random channels independently, bypassing the need for pre-key establishment. Furthermore, by using a quorum system, nodes are guaranteed to meet within a bounded time to exchange pending messages. The scheme also enables nodes to transmit packets to multiple receivers simultaneously. We validate the proposed scheme via extensive simulations and present its robustness and efficiency.

Efficient MCS selection for MBSFN transmissions over LTE networks

Abstract: Long Term Evolution (LTE), the next-generation network beyond 3G, is designed to support the explosion in demand for bandwidth-hungry multimedia services that are already experienced in wired networks. To support Multimedia Broadcast/Multicast Services (MBMS), LTE offers functionality to transmit MBMS over a Single Frequency Network (MBSFN), where a time-synchronized common waveform is transmitted from multiple cells for a given duration. This significantly improves the Spectral Efficiency (SE) compared to conventional MBMS operation. The achieved SE is mainly determined by the Modulation and Coding Scheme (MCS) utilized by the LTE physical layer. In this paper we propose and evaluate four approaches for the selection of the MCS that will be utilized for the transmission of the MBSFN data. The evaluation of the approaches is performed for different users' distribution and from SE perspective. Based on the SE measurement, we determine the most suitable approach for the corresponding users' distribution.

Urban-X: Towards distributed channel assignment in cognitive multi-radio mesh networks

Abstract: Researches about multi-radio mesh networks have mostly focused on channel allocation under internal interference. However, the deployment of WMNs in unlicensed bands of dense urban areas imposes many challenges regarding co-existence with residential access points. In this paper, we propose Urban-X, which is a first attempt towards a new architecture for MultiRadio Cognitive Mesh Networks. We develop a novel channel assignment that reflects channel and residential traffic state of external users to maximize network throughput. We evaluate our approach using an enhancement of the ns-2 simulator. Urban-X demonstrate the feasibility of our approach and show robustness to variation of channel environment and external user traffic.

A secure interconnection model for IPv6 enabled wireless sensor networks

Abstract: The usage of IPv6 on Wireless Sensor Networks (WSNs) can enable the integration of existing and new sensing applications with the Internet, therefore contributing to a major evolution towards the realization of the internet of things. We believe this vision to be realizable only if security is properly addressed. Although many proposals do exist in the literature to address specific security issues on sensor networks, a new security model and security mechanisms are needed to support the secure integration of IP enabled WSNs with the Internet. Such a security model should allow for end-to-end security and should be able to provide mechanisms that allow for the flexible adaptation of security to the resource limitations of sensor nodes. We propose and evaluate a new secure interconnection model and security mechanisms to enable the secure integration of IP enabled WSNs with the Internet. Our model introduces 6lowpan security headers to enable end-to-end security between sensor nodes and hosts in the Internet, while also providing mechanisms to selectively control the energy expended with security operations on the WSN. Although the usage of security at the network layer on WSNs is not consensual, we believe that its proper design and implementation can bring a substantial contribution to the evolution of the Internet.

Extracting human mobility patterns from GPS-based traces

Abstract: In this paper we analyze few GPS-based traces to infer human mobility patterns. We propose a clustering method to extract the main points of interest, called geo-locations, from GPS data. Starting from geo-locations we propose a definition of community, the geo-community, which captures the relation between a spatial description of human movements and the social context where users live. A statistical analysis of the principal characteristics of human walks provide the fitting distributions of distances covered by people inside a geo-location and among geo-locations and pause time. Finally we analyze factors influencing people when choosing successive location in their movement.

A delay/disruption tolerant solution for mobile-to-mobile file sharing

Abstract: Due to mobility, communication links between mobile nodes are transient and network maintenance overhead is a major performance bottleneck for data transmission. Low node density makes it difficult to establish end-to-end connection, thus impeding a continuous end-to-end path between a source and a destination. This creates a modern type of DTN, which was originally intended for communication in outer space, but is now directly accessible from our pockets. In this paper, we present a special purpose system for searching and transferring files tailored to both the characteristics of MANETs and the requirements of P2P file sharing. Our approach is based on an application layer overlay network. We port a DTN type solution into an infrastructure-less environment like MANETs and leverage peer mobility to reach data in other disconnected networks. This is done by implementing an asynchronous communication model, store-delegate-and-forward, like DTNs, where a peer can delegate unaccomplished file download or query tasks to special peers. To improve data transmission performance while reducing communication overhead, we select these special peers by the expectation of encountering them again in future and assign them different download starting point on the file.

ROI adaptive scalable video coding for limited bandwidth wireless networks

Abstract: Much of the attention in the field of video adaptation has been directed to the Scalable Video Coding (SVC), which is the extension of the H.264/AVC standard, since the bit-stream scalability for video is a desirable feature for many multimedia applications. The need for the scalability mainly arises from the need for spatial formats, bit rates or power. To fulfill these requirements, it would be beneficial to simultaneously transmit or store video in variety of spatial/temporal resolutions and qualities, leading to the video bit-stream scalability. Regions-of-interest (ROI) coding is a desirable feature in future applications of Scalable Video Coding. For those SVC applications, users at the decoder side usually wish to receive a high-quality decoded video stream, containing the desired ROI, which should be adaptively selected from the pre-encoded scalable bit-stream. In this work, we present a novel ROI adaptive scalable video coding scheme, enabling to adaptively set desirable ROI location, size, resolution and bit-rate, according to the limited network bandwidth and predefined settings. This, in turn, will enable providing an effective rate control for multiple ROIs, thereby enabling adaptively selecting the required ROI from multiple ROIs in the scalable bit-stream, and adaptively changing ROI spatial resolution, ROI visual quality or amount of bits allocated for each ROI, according to the network bandwidth and user's settings (i.e., user's display resolution, etc.).

An energy-efficient clock synchronization protocol for Wireless Sensor Networks

Abstract: The behavior of Wireless Sensor Networks (WSN) is nowadays widely analyzed. One of the most important issues is related to their energy consumption, as this has a major impact on the network lifetime. Another important application requirement is to ensure data sensing synchronization, which leads to additional energy consumption as a high number of messages is sent and received at each node. Our proposal consists in implementing a combined synchronization protocol based on the IEEE 1588 standard that was designed for wired networks and the PBS (Pairwise Broadcast Synchronization) protocol that was designed for sensor networks, as none of them is able to provide the needed synchronization accuracy for our application on its own. The main goals of our new synchronization protocol are: to ensure the accuracy of local clocks up to a tenth of a microsecond and to provide an important energy saving. Our results obtained using NS-2 (Network Simulator) show that the performance of our solution (IEEE 1588-PBS) matches our application requirements with regard to the synchronization, with a significant improvement in energy saving.

An IEEE 802.11 MAC Software Defined Radio implementation for experimental wireless communications and networking research

Abstract: Wireless ad-hoc networking will be a fundamental component of emerging technologies such as multi-hop cellular networks, vehicular ad-hoc networks and wireless mesh networks, with most of these technologies based on evolved versions of the 802.11 standard. To achieve their expected benefits, and address their challenges, in terms of energy efficiency, reliability or reconfigurability, advanced cooperative and cross-layer communications and networking techniques need to be investigated. Most of the studies conducted to date are based on analytical and simulation techniques, and the use of commercial hardware equipment usually lacks the flexibility needed to conduct advanced research studies. In this context, this paper presents a fully programmable Software Defined Radio implementation of the IEEE 802.11 MAC that can be used, configured and fully modified, to develop advanced cross-layer communications and networking techniques.

Improved backoff algorithm for IEEE 802.15.4 wireless sensor networks

Abstract: In wireless sensor networks (WSN) the medium access control CSMA/CA uses binary exponential backoff (BEB) algorithm to minimize collision among the contending nodes. The range of backoff exponent is limited to very small values. This causes channel access collision among the nodes resulting in degradation of quality of service. In this paper improved binary exponential backoff (IBEB) algorithm is proposed using interim backoff (IB) and unit interim period (IP) to minimize channel access collision by randomly waking up within the backoff time to sense the channel. The result shows that IBEB outperforms significantly the existing BEB algorithm employed in the IEEE 802.15.4 MAC standard as well as Linear/Multiplicative Increase and Linear Decrease (LMILD) and Multiplicative Increase Linear Decrease (MILD) schemes on variable network load and size.

Centrality-based routing for Wireless Sensor Networks

Abstract: The use of topological features, more specifically, the importance of an element related to its structural position is a subject widely studied. For instance, complex networks theory provides some general use of centrality measures that have been applied to a large variety of knowledge fields. This work aims to use centrality information in the design of routing algorithms for Wireless Sensor Networks (WSN). In this context, we propose a new topological measure, the Sink Betweenness, a distributed algorithm to calculate it, and devise a tree-based routing algorithm that takes advantage of it. Simulations comparing our approach to some well-known algorithms show that our tree-based algorithm improves the routing overlap, favoring data fusion.

Deterring whitewashing attacks in reputation based schemes for mobile ad hoc networks

Abstract: In multihop networks such as mobile ad hoc networks (MANETs), a node can misbehave by selfishly dropping others' packets to save battery life. This selfishness or misbehaviour can disrupt the whole network functionality and can severely degrade network performance. Reputation based models have been developed to discourage node misbehaviour. However, these models are vulnerable to whitewashing attacks. Whitewashing occurs when a node having poor reputation/trust changes its identity to start afresh and escape from the consequences of its bad actions. This attack can significantly affect the performance of reputation based models. We propose a reputation based scheme for MANETs that acts as a deterrent for whitewashing attacks. Rather than trying to detect whitewashing attacks, we approach the problem in a novel way by removing the advantages that whitewashing can provide. In our proposed scheme, each node must pay an entry fee to consume network services. As monetary fees are not suitable for MANETs due to fee management complications, instead of a monetary fee we use a fee in the form of cooperation. A node will receive services from the network after it cooperates until its reputation is increased to a certain level Y. For a normal selfish node, it is no longer beneficial to perform a whitewash because it will be required to pay the entry fee each time it enters into the network. Simulation results show that our scheme performs well in reducing evil throughput and evil nodes' utility as compared to the CONFIDANT scheme in the presence of whitewashing nodes.

An always available control channel for cooperative sensing in cognitive radio networks

Abstract: In the Cognitive Radio (CR) framework, the Opportunistic Spectrum Access (OSA) is a promising solution to increase spectral efficiency. However in an OSA network secondary unlicensed cognitive nodes have to agree on which spectral resources they are allowed to use without compromising performance of primary licensed users. This requires a common control channel for sharing spectrum sensing information. Among the ways to realize it, the utilization of Ultra-wideband (UWB) techniques has been proposed in the literature. In this paper we face the problem of dimensioning an “always on” underlay UWB signalling network for sensing information exchange among secondary CR nodes avoiding harmful interference to primary users. To this aim, we analyse the tradeoff between the connectivity degree of a multi-hop underlay signalling network, related to the bit-rate of the control channel, and its coexistence with primary licensed systems.

Error concealment techniques for multi-view video

Abstract: The H.264/AVC multi-view extension provides for high compression ratios of multi-view sequences. The coding scheme used exploits spatial, temporal and inter-view dependability for this scope. However, in the event of transmission errors, this leads to the propagation of the distorted macroblocks, degrading the quality of the video perceived by the user. In this paper we introduce error resilient coding and error concealment techniques in Multi-view Video Coding to reduce this effect. The results obtained demonstrate that better multiview video reconstruction is obtained when Intra-coded frames are spatially concealed while Inter-coded frames are concealed using motion compensation techniques, within the multi-view prediction structure. Furthermore, additional gain in quality can be achieved when Anchor frames are concealed using a combination of spatial and motion compensation techniques.

Spectral and energy efficiencies of OFDMA wireless cellular networks

Abstract: We study in the present paper the spectral efficiency of OFDMA cellular networks which is a classical indicator of their performance usually calculated by simulations. On the other hand, due to an increasing interest on the environmental impact of these networks, we study also their energy efficiency which may be defined as the ratio of the spectral efficiency and the consumed energy. We give an explicit expression of the signal to interference and noise power ratio (SINR) as function of the user's location. This permits to calculate easily the cell spectral efficiency, and thus to study its variations with respect to the key parameters of the network such as the cell radius, the propagation characteristics and the single link performance. We show that the energy efficiency admits a maximum for some value of the transmitted power which is finite and nonnull. Moreover, we observe that optimizing the transmitted power permits to double the energy efficiency.

Vehicular congestion modeling and estimation for advanced traveler information systems

Abstract: It is widely accepted that the steady increase of urban vehicular congestion requires the implementation of adequate countermeasures. Intelligent Transportation Systems (ITSs) represent one of the possible solutions, as they strive to optimize the use of the available road network resources. Within this domain, the Advanced Travel Information Systems (ATISs) specifically address the vehicular congestion problem as they provide travelers, by means of a wireless channel, with updated road information. On receiving such information, travelers use their onboard Personal Navigation Devices (PNDs) to decide the best route to their destination. Clearly, ATISs become increasingly reliable the more they accurately identify the roads that are congested. We here propose a new model for detecting congestion that supports the accurate estimation and short-term forecasting of the state of a road to be used with ATISs. Such model can be generally applied to any type of street, as it does not require any a-priori knowledge, nor an estimate of any street parameter. We present the results of several experiments, performed on different urban roads, which confirm the efficacy of our proposal.

Path energy weight: A global energy-aware routing protocol for wireless sensor networks

Abstract: Recent development in the field of Wireless communications and electronics has enabled the deployment of Wireless sensor Networks (WSNs) in an expanding variety of applications. Significantly, wireless communications have demonstrated profound significance in a variety of applications ranging from military to health applications and from home to industry. In WSNs, a major goal is conserving the sensor nodes' energy and thus maximizing the network lifetime. Several energy efficient routing protocols have been proposed in the literature. However, in these protocols, a path is selected based on the local energy view of a sensor node. In this paper, we propose an energy-efficient routing protocol that selects a communication path based on the global energy view of the network. The path selection criterion is based on an energy-weight function to reflect how balanced is the energy distribution among all nodes along the path. The energy weight function estimates the energy weight of different paths and the communication path with the best energy weight is selected. Simulation results indicate clearly that compared to the routing protocol in [9], our proposed protocol distributes the energy consumption evenly among the network nodes and thus maximizes the network life time.

Simple distributed interference source localization for radio environment mapping

Abstract: In order to construct a radio environmental map that can help navigating secondary communication in TV bands, we present a new method of interference source localization for cognitive radio networks. Our low-cost, high-precision localization method, operates without any prior knowledge of the interference source other than transmitter power. It can be divided into two steps: an estimation step at each sensor based on classical methods to estimate the angle of arrival and the received signal power, followed by an SNR-aided fusion. Simulation results show that tens of sensor nodes each having two antennas in a large-scale area setting are enough to achieve accurate location. The proposed location method is practical, economic and essential for blind interference source localization in cognitive radio networks.

Collusion attack resistance through forced MPR switching in OLSR

Abstract: Collusion Attack is an attack against Mobile Ad Hoc Networks and is based on Optimised Link State Routing (OLSR) Protocol. In this attack, two attacking nodes collude to prevent routes to a target node from being established in the network. Packet Delivery Ratio (PDR) of nodes 2-hops away from the victim drops to 0%. Multi Point Relay (MPR) selection process in OLSR is exploited to achieve route denial. In this paper, we propose a novel attack resistant method named Forced MPR Switching OLSR (FMS-OLSR), in which, whenever a node observes symptoms of the attack, it temporarily blacklists potential attackers. This forces recomputation of its MPR set, thus, avoiding the attack. Simulation results on ns-3 show that FMS-OLSR is resistant to Collusion Attacks and incurs only a minimal penalty on network performance.

QoE estimation of a location-based mobile game using on-body sensors and QoS-related data

Abstract: The scope of this paper is the interdisciplinary measurement and modeling methodology of Quality of Experience (QoE) when playing a mobile location-based massively multiplayer online role-playing game (MMORPG) that places the virtual world on top of the real world using the user's location. The paper introduces the implementation of a re-usable mobile QoE measurement framework on the Android platform and illustrates how it was applied in a concrete case-study. In this respect, a multidimensional QoE prediction model consisting of both objective and subjective parameters is presented. In this model, test users' evaluations regarding feelings of amusement, absorption or engagement experienced while playing a popular location based mobile game (Parallel Kingdom) are taken into account and related to a set of objective QoS-related parameters, contextual data, and physiological data obtained from an on-body sensor. The latter evidences the intensity of physical activity of the test users during the gaming session, taking into account Metabolic Equivalent of Task (MET) measurements. Results of this study indicate that the test users' QoE was influenced by their physical effort, the data connection type used, and the playing context (e.g. interaction with other players). Despite of the fact of using a re-usable framework for QoE estimation, the analysis is limited to this particular popular (more than 100000 users) mobile game.

Reliability assessment of wireless sensor nodes with non-linear battery discharge

Abstract: Wireless sensor networks are constituted of a large number of tiny sensor nodes randomly distributed over a geographical region. In order to reduce power consumption, nodes undergo cycles of active-sleep periods that reduce their ability to send/receive data. Aim of this paper is to analyze the reliability of a battery-powered sensor node with active-sleep cycles considering both linear and non linear discharge processes. The approach used in the evaluation is based on continuous phase type distributions and Kronecker algebra. The technique is thus applied to the evaluation of an example in order to demonstrate its effectiveness. The obtained results strongly encourage future work, figuring out possible application in wider network context with complex topology, redundant nodes, and unreliable links, due to the Kronecher algebra capabilities to manage the state space explosion problem.

Enhancing FEC application in LTE cellular networks

Abstract: 3rdGeneration Partnership Project's (3GPP) Long Term Evolution (LTE) is focused on enhancing the Universal Terrestrial Radio Access (UTRA). Evolved-Multimedia Broadcast and Multicast Service (e-MBMS) uses Multimedia Broadcast over a Single Frequency Network (MBSFN) operation in order to improve its performance. In MBSFN operation, data are transmitted simultaneously over the air from multiple tightly time-synchronized cells. Raptor codes have been standardized as the main application layer Forward Error Correction (FEC) method for e-MBMS due to the advanced error protection they offer and their overall performance. In this study, we investigate the application of FEC in MBSFN-enabled LTE cellular networks and we propose a new scheme that takes into account the properties of MBSFN in order to provide a more efficient operation of FEC during e-MBMS transmissions. The proposed scheme is compared with other file recovery methods and is evaluated against various network parameters in a realistic simulation environment.

A strategy for best access point selection

Abstract: This paper describes a scheme for providing mobile multimedia applications, distributed in a Wireless Local Area Network (WLAN), with seamless communications. Specifically, when multiple WLAN access points are available, the scheme enables a mobile node to select dynamically the access point to connect with, based on a combination of measured parameters such as signal strength, transmission rate, channel load and interference. The proposed scheme has been implemented as part of a cross-layer architecture which offers the possibility of concurrently exploiting multiple networks for the same communication flow generated by some distributed multimedia application. The results which have obtained from an experimental assessment of our scheme demonstrate its adequacy and effectiveness.

Experimental evaluation of interference mitigation on the 2.4 GHz ISM band using channel hopping

Abstract: Both research and practice have revealed that sensor devices running the 802.15.4 on their MAC layer may be competing for wireless communication on the 2.4 GHz ISM band with Wi-Fi, Bluetooth and other proprietary devices. Building upon a SunSPOT development platform, we evaluate the impact of channel hopping on interference mitigation in the 2.4 GHz ISM band and propose a channel hopping model that may be used to mitigate interference under different indoor WSN deployment scenarios. The results obtained by using a wireless sensor network where the sensor nodes are placed at different distances from an interference source and using different power levels agree with previous experimental works on interference in the 2.4GHz band and reveal that (1) channel hopping can improve the performance of WSNs when deployed in Wi-Fi collocating environments and (2) among the different parameters, the received signal strength indication (RSSI) is the most relevant for WSN performance evaluation in collocating Wi-Fi environments.

Adaptive Random Linear Network Coding with Controlled Forwarding for wireless broadcast

Abstract: Multicasting and Broadcasting are important communication techniques in wireless adhoc networks to disseminate control messages and other important information during emergencies, battlefield operations, disaster relief efforts, etc. In this paper we propose an adaptive multi-source broadcasting protocol using Random Linear Network Coding. One key feature of this protocol is its multi-source operation, coding packets from different sources in the same generation. The protocol also efficiently controls the number of re-transmissions based on neighborhood information, limits the size of generations by introducing the concept of Generation Distance (GD) for multi-source operation, supports early decoding, and adaptively calculates the time-out for generations based on the generation size and transmission rate (packets/sec). Simulation results show that inter-mixing of packets from different sources results in improved Packet Delivery Ratio (PDR) as well as lower latency, compared to the already proposed single-source schemes. We also investigated its adaptive performance compared to a baseline flooding protocol and show that our protocol delivers consistently high PDR and low latency in both single-source and multi-source scenarios for a range of network densities and traffic rates.

Opportunistic packet scheduling and routing in wireless mesh networks

Abstract: Opportunistic routing has emerged as a promising approach to cope with unreliable and unpredictable wireless links in static multi-hop wireless networks. Most existing opportunistic schemes force strict timing between the potential forwarders in order to reduce the number of redundant packet copies generated during the forwarding process. Alternative opportunistic schemes have been also proposed, which adopt a randomized forwarding process to better exploit path diversity. However, both approaches suffer from performance degradations when the number of flows increases. To address this issue, in this paper we describe PacketOPP, a novel opportunistic routing protocol that combines randomized opportunistic forwarding with opportunistic packet scheduling to improve the support of multiple simultaneous flows. Specifically, PacketOPP implements a packet scheduler to award a higher priority to the packets that are expected to deliver the maximum opportunistic gain. Using extensive ns-2 simulations we show that PacketOPP outperforms state-of-the-art non-scheduled opportunistic routing protocols, such as ROMER and MaxOPP, as well as a traditional shortest path routing protocol.

Self-organized aggregation in irregular wireless networks

Abstract: Gossip-based epidemic protocols are used to aggregate data in distributed systems. This fault-tolerant approach does neither require maintenance of any global network state nor knowledge of network structure. However, although gossip-based aggregation algorithms scale well for graphs with good expansion, their efficiency for sparse graphs is unexamined. In this paper we analyze the feasibility and efficiency of a gossip aggregation protocol in wireless networks with low expansion. We propose a modification of the existing aggregation algorithm for use in locality-aware, sparse, static wireless networks. Our protocol terminates autonomously, uses less bandwidth than the original version, and removes the need for the leader election process while counting network nodes. Aggregates are calculated only over nodes placed in the vicinity, and nodes communicate only with their immediate neighbors by using a wireless broadcast. We evaluate our approach by simulation on sparse, irregular graphs with low expansion for the simplified system model. Furthermore, we analytically assess the worst-case convergence time of this protocol for sparse wireless networks and also for the simplified system model.