A Self-Organization Mechanism for a Cold Chain Monitoring System

In this paper, we propose an autonomous self-organization mechanism for the monitoring of the cold chain. All along the transportation through this logistic chain, the sensors are moved with the goods in very different networks. We argue that depending on the situation some protocols are more suited than others and it is necessary the sensors to adapt and to switch dynamically depending on where they are. The mechanism we designed allows a sensor to autonomously detect the context where it is and to choose the best protocols for this situation. It assures the adaptability to different contexts where a sensor may move (warehouses, trucks,...). It implements a hybrid synchronization mechanism to assure duty cycle synchronization between nodes with high power efficiency and context adaptation. This hybrid mechanism uses wake up signals to activate a sleeping sensor to assure fast synchronization and efficient power consumption optimization. This mechanism also changes dynamically the routing protocol to the different networks the sensors enter in (dense or sparse topologies, with or without total visibility among all nodes,...).