An optimized Markov model to predict link quality in mobile wireless sensor networks

Achieving RF connectivity is a critical issue in any wireless application. This is particularly challenging in mobile applications, as links are up and down many times. In such scenarios, where nodes keep on moving, it would be interesting for them to have knowledge of their remaining RF connectivity time. Such information can be used, for instance, to improve existing network protocols. The current paper addresses this problem by presenting the so-called Oriented Birth-Death (O-BD). The proposed solution is a modified version of the existing Birth-Death (BD) prediction model. We introduce in this work the notion of orientation to represent a tendency in the link future state. In other words, it considers if the link tends to increase or decrease the signal strength to make the prediction. Thereby a considerable prediction improvement is obtained, as shown in the evaluation performed. The proposed solution is well suited for mobile wireless sensor networks, whose nodes have low computational power and should be energy harvesting.