Z-Monitor: A Monitoring Tool for IEEE Wireless Personal Area Networks

Transcription

1 Z-Monitor: A Monitoring Tool for IEEE Wireless Personal Area Networks Anis Koubâa 12 1 COINS Research Group, Al-Imam Mohamed bin Saud Islamic University (CCIS-IMAMU), Riyadh, Saudi Arabia. 2 CISTER Research Unit, Polytechnic Institute of Porto (ISEP/IPP), Portugal. s: akoubaa@coins.csrlab.org Abstract. This technical report presents a brief description of Z-Monitor, a monitoring tool for IEEE wireless personal area networks. The motivation behind Z-Monitor is the fact that commercial products for monitoring and testing IEEE compliant WPANs are too expensive and typically require special sniffing hardware. We present commercially available platforms and compare their functionalities against those of Z-Monitor. 1 Introduction Z-Monitor (ZM) [1] is a free tool for monitoring and controlling IEEE Wireless Personal Area Networks (WPANs). Z-Monitor provides a convenient solution for researchers and students for developing, debugging and deploying wireless sensor network applications based on IEEE standard protocol. Z-Monitor is compatible with the open-source official TinyOS implementation of the IEEE recently released by the TinyOS 15.4 WG. The motivation behind Z-Monitor is the fact that commercial products for monitoring and testing IEEE compliant WPANs are too expensive and typically require special sniffing hardware. In addition, other generic-purpose sniffers such as WireShark and Ethereal are not specifically designed for IEEE compliant WPANs. Z-Monitor provides a free solution that relies on the use of simple commercially available motes for sniffing traffic and monitoring IEEE based WPANs. 2 Related Products 2.1 Daintree Sensor Network Analyzer Sensor Network Analyzer (SNA) [2] is monitoring software for ZigBeebased WSN developed and released by Daintree Network, which is among

2 Fig. 1. Daintree SNA Packet Analyzer Fig. 2. Daintree SNA Monitoring View the ZigBee Alliance s members. The SNA has advanced visualization capabilities and has the ability to show the network as a whole. It also enables the end-user to view all devices and interactions simultaneously. From this system view, it is possible to collect critical performance metrics such as end to-end latency or packet loss. Fig. 1 and Fig. 2 present some screenshots of the SNA software. The Daintree SNA software presents the following features: Visualization: Visualizes and understand network and device behavior with system-level network analysis, Analysis: Analyzes and debug associated protocols with detailed packet analysis,

3 Measurement: Obtains measurements on network, device and route performance, Live Monitoring: Monitors live networks and record operation for future review (with playback controls including pause, fast forward, and breakpoints). Use to test development, verify commissioning, and manage deployed networks, Management: Ensures optimal network operation with powerful monitoring and troubleshooting tools. The Daintree SNA product is comprehensive solution for ZigBee and testing, analysis and commissioning. However, its high cost prevents its use at a wide level. 2.2 CC2420 Packet Sniffer The CC2420 packet sniffer [3] captures, filters and decodes IEEE MAC packets, and displays them in a convenient way. Frames may be filtered based on frame type and addressing information. Data may be stored to a binary file format. Data frames, beacon frames, command frames and acknowledge frames are decoded separately, and each field for each frame is decoded and displayed separately on screen. This tool only considers the Physical, MAC and network layers of the IEEE /Zig- Bee protocol stack. It does not present any analysis of the application layer data and does not provide any means for monitoring and controlling large-scale multi-hop networks. Fig. 4 presents a screenshot of the CC2420 packet sniffer. 2.3 ZENA Network Analyzer The ZENA tool [4] is a wireless network analyzer that graphically displays wireless network traffic following the IEEE specification on the 2.4GHz band.the ZENA analyzer supports the ZigBee, MiWi and MiWi P2P protocols. In conjunction with the hardware packet sniffer, the software can analyze complete network traffic and graphically display decoded packets. It can also display a graphical representation of the network topology and the messages as they ow through the network. This information can then be saved and/or exported for further analysis. Debugging a wireless network without the ZENA analyzer is like trying to debug a circuit without an oscilloscope. If you will be developing with either ZigBee or the MiWi protocols, the ZENA analyzer is an essential development tool.

4 Fig. 3. CC2420 Packet Sniffer Fig. 4. ZENA Network Analyzer 3 Z-Monitor Features Z-Monitor 1.0 provides a friendly Graphical User Interface (GUI) that supports the following features: Frame Decoding: it shows the details about received frames that pertain to the Physical and MAC layers with respect to the IEEE standard specification. Two different GUIs (in Fig. 5 and Fig. 6) were designed for Frame Decoding operation offering more flexibility to users for protocol analysis.

5 Fig. 5. Z-Monitor Frame Decoding Topology Visualization: it shows the logical topology of the network as shown in Fig. 7 (parent-to-child relationship between nodes). Traffic Timeline: it shows the sequence of packet received over time. Packet Statistics: it provides useful statistics about number and type of packets received by the sniffer (Fig. 8). Statistics can be saved in a file and analysed off-line. Star-based topologys: the current version supports star-based topology as it is related to the Physical and MAC Layers of the IEEE standard protocol. Multi-hop support is planned for next releases with support of ZigBee and 6LowPAN Network Layer protocols. Z-Monitor will be extended to provide more comprehensive features. Currently, we expect to provide the following contributions in the shortterm future: Extending it to 6LowPAN and ZigBee Network Layers Supporting multi-hop topologies Adding advanced filtering options Supporting physical location visualization 4 Acknowledgments This work is funded by the Deanship of Research at Al-Imam Mohamed bin Saud University under the COINS Research Group.

6 Fig. 6. Z-Monitor Packet Analyzer Fig. 7. Z-Monitor Network Topology I would like to thank my students at Al-Imam Mohamed bin Saud University Ahmed Al-Dhkeel and Mossab Alsania for their valuable work in implementing the first version Z-Monitor tool. I would also like to thank Jan Hauer from TU Berlin for his valuable help in using his TKN sniffer application used in the base station. I am also thankful to Mario Alves from CISTER Research Unit and Vlado Handziski from TU Berlin for their constructive feedback.

7 Fig. 8. Z-Monitor Packet Statistics References 1. Z-monitor, a monitoring tool for ieee wpan. [Online]. Available: 2. Daintree sensor network analyzer. [Online]. Available: 3. Cc2420 packet sniffer, texas instruments. [Online]. Available: 4. Zena network analyzer. [Online]. Available: