Improving the medium access in highly mobile Wireless Sensor Networks

Mobility has recently been contemplated as a way to improve sensing coverage and connectivity in unattended Wireless Sensor Networks. However, accessing the medium in such dynamic topologies raises multiple problems on mobile sensors. Synchronization issues between fixed and mobile nodes may prevent the latter from successfully sending data to their peers. Mobile nodes can also suffer from long medium access delays when traveling through congested areas. In these circumstances, the expected next hop may not be valid anymore when the data packet is actually sent on the medium. In this article, we present the X-Machiavel protocol which aims at addressing these issues. By allowing mobile nodes to take possession of a reserved medium, it guarantees that they will be able to send their data in congested networks within a small delay, while keeping the overhead low for the fixed sensors. Our proposal also relieves the mobile sensors from maintaining a list of next hops by relying on the fixed sensors infrastructure for the routing operations. We demonstrate by simulation the benefits of our proposal compared to the X-MAC protocol on which our contribution relies. The principles behind X-Machiavel can be combined with other preamble sampling protocols in order to improve their efficiency in mobile environments.

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