Supporting the Sink Mobility: a Case Study for Wireless Sensor Networks

This paper deals with a system level design solution to support information gathering in the presence of a mobile querying node that experiences frequent disconnections from a Wireless Sensor Network (WSN), an application scenario that embraces the area of Intelligent Transportation Systems (ITS). The proposed scheme basically relies on the network capability of autonomously adapting to sink mobility in order to properly deliver the requested data. The system is defined as far as its functional elements and related communications protocols, together with validating its effectiveness by means of a simulative study. In particular, the performance in terms of delivering latency and packet delivery ratio has been investigated for several network topologies, architecture and mobility pattern, always highlighting a remarkable quality of provided services together with robustness with regard to operative conditions.