Mobility-aware medium access control protocols for wireless sensor networks: A survey

Abstract The popularity of wireless sensor networks has grown rapidly in recent years, with new directions including healthcare monitoring and disaster response. This increased use in mobile applications has naturally led to new challenges to the design of sensor protocols, especially in the media access control (MAC) sublayer. In order to design a MAC protocol which takes mobility awareness into account, understanding how mobility can be described by mobility models is crucial. Moreover, for applications that transform between static, periodic-mobile, random-mobile, or variable number of nodes, flexibility in design is a key consideration. Therefore, in this paper mobility pattern, mobility models and mobility estimation algorithms for wireless sensor networks are discussed. The state of the art of medium access control protocols with mobility-handling capabilities is overviewed and a comparative study of the most well-known mobility aware MAC protocols is given. Finally, future research directions for mobility-aware MAC protocols are presented. We believe this paper will aid researchers by serving as a reference to orient future research in this area.

[1]  Seth J. Teller,et al.  Growing an organic indoor location system , 2010, MobiSys '10.

[2]  Ashutosh Sabharwal,et al.  Using Predictable Observer Mobility for Power Efficient Design of Sensor Networks , 2003, IPSN.

[3]  Chunming Qiao,et al.  Medium access control with a dynamic duty cycle for sensor networks , 2004, 2004 IEEE Wireless Communications and Networking Conference (IEEE Cat. No.04TH8733).

[4]  Ian F. Akyildiz,et al.  Wireless Underground Sensor Networks: MI-based communication systems for underground applications. , 2015, IEEE Antennas and Propagation Magazine.

[5]  Arshad Jhumka,et al.  On the Design of Mobility-Tolerant TDMA-Based Media Access Control (MAC) Protocol for Mobile Sensor Networks , 2007, ICDCIT.

[6]  Francisco Falcone,et al.  Design and Implementation of Context Aware Applications With Wireless Sensor Network Support in Urban Train Transportation Environments , 2017, IEEE Sensors Journal.

[7]  Jalel Ben-Othman,et al.  An adaptive mobility aware and energy efficient MAC protocol for wireless sensor networks , 2009, 2009 IEEE Symposium on Computers and Communications.

[8]  Hari Balakrishnan,et al.  A measurement study of vehicular internet access using in situ Wi-Fi networks , 2006, MobiCom '06.

[9]  Mohamed F. Younis,et al.  Positioning of Base Stations in Wireless Sensor Networks , 2007, IEEE Communications Magazine.

[10]  V. Milutinovic,et al.  A survey of military applications of wireless sensor networks , 2012, 2012 Mediterranean Conference on Embedded Computing (MECO).

[11]  Eman Shaaban,et al.  Mobility-aware MAC protocol for delay-sensitive wireless sensor networks , 2009, 2009 International Conference on Ultra Modern Telecommunications & Workshops.

[12]  Milos Blagojevic,et al.  MCMAC: An Optimized Medium Access Control Protocol for Mobile Clusters in Wireless Sensor Networks , 2010, 2010 7th Annual IEEE Communications Society Conference on Sensor, Mesh and Ad Hoc Communications and Networks (SECON).

[13]  Brice Augustin,et al.  Wireless Sensor Networks for medical care services , 2011, 2011 7th International Wireless Communications and Mobile Computing Conference.

[14]  Xiao Su,et al.  A Mobility Adaptive Hybrid Protocol for Wireless Sensor Networks , 2008, 2008 5th IEEE Consumer Communications and Networking Conference.

[15]  Ahmed Helmy,et al.  IMPORTANT: a framework to systematically analyze the Impact of Mobility on Performance of Routing Protocols for Adhoc Networks , 2003, IEEE INFOCOM 2003. Twenty-second Annual Joint Conference of the IEEE Computer and Communications Societies (IEEE Cat. No.03CH37428).

[16]  Paul J.M. Havinga,et al.  Collaborative algorithms for communication in wireless sensor networks , 2003 .

[17]  Damien Roth,et al.  MOBINET: Mobility management across different wireless sensor networks , 2011, 2011 IEEE Wireless Communications and Networking Conference.

[18]  Eric Anderson,et al.  X-MAC: a short preamble MAC protocol for duty-cycled wireless sensor networks , 2006, SenSys '06.

[19]  Cem Ersoy,et al.  Distributed Mobile Sink Routing for Wireless Sensor Networks: A Survey , 2014, IEEE Communications Surveys & Tutorials.

[20]  Ahmed Helmy,et al.  The IMPORTANT framework for analyzing the Impact of Mobility on Performance Of RouTing protocols for Adhoc NeTworks , 2003, Ad Hoc Networks.

[21]  José D. P. Rolim,et al.  Biased Sink Mobility with Adaptive Stop Times for Low Latency Data Collection in Sensor Networks , 2009, GLOBECOM.

[22]  Sang-Ha Kim,et al.  Scalable and robust data dissemination for large-scale wireless sensor networks , 2010, IEEE Transactions on Consumer Electronics.

[23]  Shozo Komaki,et al.  Mobility-aware timeout medium access control protocol for wireless sensor networks , 2014 .

[24]  Sajal K. Das,et al.  Longevity of routes in mobile ad hoc networks , 2001, IEEE VTS 53rd Vehicular Technology Conference, Spring 2001. Proceedings (Cat. No.01CH37202).

[25]  James Udy,et al.  An autonomous surface vehicle for water quality monitoring , 2009, ICRA 2009.

[26]  H. T. Mouftah,et al.  Routing protocols for wireless sensor networks with mobile sinks: a survey , 2014, IEEE Communications Magazine.

[27]  Sheng Chen,et al.  Social-aware D2D communications: qualitative insights and quantitative analysis , 2014, IEEE Communications Magazine.

[28]  Muneeb Ali,et al.  MMAC: a mobility-adaptive, collision-free MAC protocol for wireless sensor networks , 2005, PCCC 2005. 24th IEEE International Performance, Computing, and Communications Conference, 2005..

[29]  Waylon Brunette,et al.  Data MULEs: modeling and analysis of a three-tier architecture for sparse sensor networks , 2003, Ad Hoc Networks.

[30]  Fernando Boavida,et al.  An Energy-Efficient Ant-Based Routing Algorithm for Wireless Sensor Networks , 2006, ANTS Workshop.

[31]  Awais Ahmad,et al.  Mobility Aware Energy Efficient Congestion Control in Mobile Wireless Sensor Network , 2014, Int. J. Distributed Sens. Networks.

[32]  Thomas Noël,et al.  Machiavel: Accessing the medium in mobile and dense WSN , 2009, 2009 IEEE 20th International Symposium on Personal, Indoor and Mobile Radio Communications.

[33]  Jang-Won Lee,et al.  An Adaptive Mobility-Supporting MAC Protocol for Mobile Sensor Networks , 2008, VTC Spring 2008 - IEEE Vehicular Technology Conference.

[34]  Xiaoyan Hong,et al.  A group mobility model for ad hoc wireless networks , 1999, MSWiM '99.

[35]  Xiaojun Cao,et al.  Ubiquitous WSN for Healthcare: Recent Advances and Future Prospects , 2014, IEEE Internet of Things Journal.

[36]  John B. Shoven,et al.  I , Edinburgh Medical and Surgical Journal.

[37]  Eylem Ekici,et al.  Mobility-based communication in wireless sensor networks , 2006, IEEE Communications Magazine.

[38]  Katia Obraczka,et al.  Energy-Efficient, Collision-Free Medium Access Control for Wireless Sensor Networks , 2006 .

[39]  Andreas Willig,et al.  Protocols and Architectures for Wireless Sensor Networks , 2005 .

[40]  Cem Ersoy,et al.  MAC protocols for wireless sensor networks: a survey , 2006, IEEE Communications Magazine.

[41]  Paul J.M. Havinga,et al.  A Lightweight Medium Access Protocol (LMAC) for Wireless Sensor Networks: Reducing Preamble Transmissions and Transceiver State Switches , 2004 .

[42]  Jun Luo,et al.  Joint Sink Mobility and Routing to Maximize the Lifetime of Wireless Sensor Networks: The Case of Constrained Mobility , 2010, IEEE/ACM Transactions on Networking.

[43]  Cüneyt Bayilmiş,et al.  HealthFace: A web-based remote monitoring interface for medical healthcare systems based on a wireless body area sensor network , 2012 .

[44]  Mohamed F. Younis,et al.  Restoring connectivity in a resource constrained WSN , 2016, J. Netw. Comput. Appl..

[45]  Wen-Zhan Song,et al.  Volcanic earthquake timing using wireless sensor networks , 2013, 2013 ACM/IEEE International Conference on Information Processing in Sensor Networks (IPSN).

[46]  John Anderson,et al.  An analysis of a large scale habitat monitoring application , 2004, SenSys '04.

[47]  Bamidele Adebisi,et al.  A Wireless Sensor Network Border Monitoring System: Deployment Issues and Routing Protocols , 2017, IEEE Sensors Journal.

[48]  Falah H. Ali,et al.  Collision Free Mobility Adaptive (CFMA) MAC for wireless sensor networks , 2013, Telecommun. Syst..

[49]  Wei Zhang,et al.  A Unified Framework for Street-View Panorama Stitching , 2016, Sensors.

[50]  Xiao Yu,et al.  A WSN healthcare monitoring system for elderly people in geriatric facilities , 2015, MIE.

[51]  R. Karnapke,et al.  An Adaptive TDMA based MAC Protocol for Mobile Wireless Sensor Networks , 2007, 2007 International Conference on Sensor Technologies and Applications (SENSORCOMM 2007).

[52]  Julien Montavont,et al.  Improving the medium access in highly mobile Wireless Sensor Networks , 2013, Telecommun. Syst..

[53]  Limin Sun,et al.  HUMS: An Autonomous Moving Strategy for Mobile Sinks in Data-Gathering Sensor Networks , 2007, EURASIP J. Wirel. Commun. Netw..

[54]  Peter I. Corke,et al.  Environmental Wireless Sensor Networks , 2010, Proceedings of the IEEE.

[55]  Ramesh Govindan,et al.  Monitoring civil structures with a wireless sensor network , 2006, IEEE Internet Computing.

[56]  Gregory J. Pottie,et al.  Protocols for self-organization of a wireless sensor network , 2000, IEEE Wirel. Commun..

[57]  Alberto Córdoba,et al.  SesToCross: Semantic Expert System to Manage Single-Lane Road Crossing , 2017, IEEE Transactions on Intelligent Transportation Systems.

[58]  Periklis Chatzimisios,et al.  Enhancing ContikiMAC for bursty traffic in mobile sensor networks , 2014, IEEE SENSORS 2014 Proceedings.

[59]  Deborah Estrin,et al.  An energy-efficient MAC protocol for wireless sensor networks , 2002, Proceedings.Twenty-First Annual Joint Conference of the IEEE Computer and Communications Societies.

[60]  Fernando Boavida,et al.  Mobility in wireless sensor networks - Survey and proposal , 2014, Comput. Commun..

[61]  Tong Liu,et al.  Mobility modeling, location tracking, and trajectory prediction in wireless ATM networks , 1998, IEEE J. Sel. Areas Commun..

[62]  Hongke Zhang,et al.  Efficient Data Collection in Wireless Sensor Networks with Path-Constrained Mobile Sinks , 2011, IEEE Trans. Mob. Comput..

[63]  Gennaro Boggia,et al.  Modeling of Call Dropping in Well-Established Cellular Networks , 2007, EURASIP J. Wirel. Commun. Netw..

[64]  Deborah Estrin,et al.  Building efficient wireless sensor networks with low-level naming , 2001, SOSP.

[65]  Khaled M. Elleithy,et al.  Low Duty Cycle, Energy-Efficient and Mobility-Based Boarder Node—MAC Hybrid Protocol for Wireless Sensor Networks , 2015, J. Signal Process. Syst..

[66]  Francesco Chiti,et al.  An integrated communications framework for context aware continuous monitoring with body sensor networks , 2009, IEEE Journal on Selected Areas in Communications.

[67]  Manuel Ricardo,et al.  Energy-aware routing for biomedical wireless sensor networks , 2014, J. Netw. Comput. Appl..

[68]  Thomas Noël,et al.  Optimizing the handover delay in mobile WSNs , 2015, 2015 IEEE 2nd World Forum on Internet of Things (WF-IoT).

[69]  Brian L. Mark,et al.  Mobility estimation for wireless networks based on an autoregressive model , 2004, IEEE Global Telecommunications Conference, 2004. GLOBECOM '04..

[70]  A SomasundaraA.,et al.  Mobile Element Scheduling for Efficient Data Collection in Wireless Sensor Networks with Dynamic Deadlines , 2004 .

[71]  Christopher Jaynes.  Acquisition of a Predictive Markov Model using Object Tracking and Correspondence in Geospatial Video Surveillance Networks , 2004 .

[72]  Ashraf Darwish,et al.  Wearable and Implantable Wireless Sensor Network Solutions for Healthcare Monitoring , 2011, Sensors.

[73]  Hamid Sharif,et al.  MOBMAC - an energy efficient and low latency MAC for mobile wireless sensor networks , 2005, 2005 Systems Communications (ICW'05, ICHSN'05, ICMCS'05, SENET'05).

[74]  Vasos Vassiliou,et al.  Wireless sensor networks mobility management using fuzzy logic , 2014, Ad Hoc Networks.

[75]  Francisco Falcone,et al.  Characterization of Radio Propagation Channel in Urban Vehicle to Infrastructure Environments to Support WSNs , 2016 .

[76]  António Pereira,et al.  Wireless Body Area Networks for Healthcare Applications: Protocol Stack Review , 2015, Int. J. Distributed Sens. Networks.

[77]  R. Budiarto,et al.  EMS-MAC: Energy Efficient Contention-Based Medium Access Control Protocol for Mobile Sensor Networks , 2011, Comput. J..

[78]  Renjie Huang,et al.  Fusion-based volcanic earthquake detection and timing in wireless sensor networks , 2013, TOSN.

[79]  Christian Schindelhauer,et al.  Mobility in Wireless Networks , 2006, SOFSEM.

[80]  Mario Di Francesco,et al.  Energy conservation in wireless sensor networks: A survey , 2009, Ad Hoc Networks.

[81]  Xiao Su,et al.  Mobility handling in MAC for wireless ad hoc networks , 2009, Wirel. Commun. Mob. Comput..

[82]  Serge Fdida,et al.  Reconsidering microscopic mobility modeling for self-organizing networks , 2006, IEEE Network.

[83]  Radhika Ranjan Roy,et al.  Handbook of Mobile Ad Hoc Networks for Mobility Models , 2010 .

[84]  Lei Shu,et al.  An energy-efficient SDN based sleep scheduling algorithm for WSNs , 2016, J. Netw. Comput. Appl..

[85]  Joel J. P. C. Rodrigues,et al.  MAC layer handover mechanism for continuous communication support in healthcare mobile wireless sensor networks , 2015, Telecommun. Syst..

[86]  Koen Langendoen,et al.  Crankshaft: An Energy-Efficient MAC-Protocol for Dense Wireless Sensor Networks , 2007, EWSN.

[87]  Rachel Cardell-Oliver,et al.  FlexiMAC: A flexible TDMA-based MAC protocol for fault-tolerant and energy-efficient wireless sensor networks , 2006, 2006 14th IEEE International Conference on Networks.

[88]  Thomas Noël,et al.  Wireless Medium Access Control under Mobility and Bursty Traffic Assumptions in WSNs , 2015, Mob. Networks Appl..

[89]  Fei Peng.  A Novel Adaptive Mobility-Aware MAC Protocol in Wireless Sensor Networks , 2015, Wirel. Pers. Commun..

[90]  Van-Su Tran,et al.  Wireless Sensor Network for Real Time Healthcare Monitoring: Network Design and Performance Evaluation Simulation , 2015 .

[91]  Lin Zhang,et al.  Cooperative Sensing and Compression in Vehicular Sensor Networks for Urban Monitoring , 2010, 2010 IEEE International Conference on Communications.

[92]  Yu Gu,et al.  The Evolution of Sink Mobility Management in Wireless Sensor Networks: A Survey , 2016, IEEE Communications Surveys & Tutorials.

[93]  Waltenegus Dargie,et al.  A Survey on Mobility and Mobility-Aware MAC Protocols in Wireless Sensor Networks , 2013, IEEE Communications Surveys & Tutorials.

[94]  Jaehoon Jeong,et al.  CRATER: A Crowd Sensing Application to Estimate Road Conditions , 2016, IEEE Access.

[95]  Waltenegus Dargie,et al.  A mobility-aware medium access control protocol for wireless sensor networks , 2010, 2010 IEEE Globecom Workshops.

[96]  Bhaskar Krishnamachari,et al.  An adaptive energy-efficient and low-latency MAC for data gathering in wireless sensor networks , 2004, 18th International Parallel and Distributed Processing Symposium, 2004. Proceedings..

[97]  Gen-Huey Chen,et al.  Utilization based duty cycle tuning MAC protocol for wireless sensor networks , 2005, GLOBECOM '05. IEEE Global Telecommunications Conference, 2005..

[98]  Thomas Noël,et al.  MoX-MAC: A low power and efficient access delay for mobile wireless sensor networks , 2011, 2011 4th Joint IFIP Wireless and Mobile Networking Conference (WMNC 2011).

[99]  Xiang-Yang Li,et al.  Opportunistic coverage for urban vehicular sensing , 2015, Comput. Commun..

[100]  Kun Qian,et al.  Design and Application of a VOC-Monitoring System Based on a ZigBee Wireless Sensor Network , 2015, IEEE Sensors Journal.

[101]  Sanjay Jha,et al.  Addressing Mobility in Wireless Sensor Media Access Protocol , 2004, Proceedings of the 2004 Intelligent Sensors, Sensor Networks and Information Processing Conference, 2004..

[102]  Rong Du,et al.  Energy Efficient Sensor Activation for Water Distribution Networks Based on Compressive Sensing , 2015, IEEE Journal on Selected Areas in Communications.

[103]  Olaf Landsiedel,et al.  MobiSense: Power-efficient micro-mobility in wireless sensor networks , 2011, 2011 International Conference on Distributed Computing in Sensor Systems and Workshops (DCOSS).

[104]  Bin Cheng,et al.  Cluster-based mobility adaptive MAC scheme for wireless sensor networks , 2012 .

[105]  Alagan Anpalagan,et al.  A detailed review of energy-efficient medium access control protocols for mobile sensor networks , 2010, Comput. Electr. Eng..

[106]  Murat Demirbas,et al.  A Fault-Local Self-Stabilizing Clustering Service for Wireless Ad Hoc Networks , 2006, IEEE Transactions on Parallel and Distributed Systems.

[107]  Adam Dunkels,et al.  The ContikiMAC Radio Duty Cycling Protocol , 2011 .

[108]  H. H. Xia.  An analytical model for predicting path loss in urban and suburban environments , 1996, Proceedings of PIMRC '96 - 7th International Symposium on Personal, Indoor, and Mobile Communications.

[109]  Ozgur Koray Sahingoz,et al.  Large scale wireless sensor networks with multi-level dynamic key management scheme , 2013, J. Syst. Archit..

[110]  Sridhar Radhakrishnan,et al.  PMAC: an adaptive energy-efficient MAC protocol for wireless sensor networks , 2005, 19th IEEE International Parallel and Distributed Processing Symposium.