Energy-Efficient Neighbor Discovery in Mobile Ad Hoc and Wireless Sensor Networks: A Survey

Due to slow advance in battery technology, power remains a bottleneck to limit wide applications of mobile ad hoc and wireless sensor networks. Among all extensive studies on minimizing power consumption, neighbor discovery is one of the fundamental components focusing on communication and access. This work surveys research literature on neighbor discovery protocols (NDPs). In general, they can be roughly classified by four underlying principles: randomness, over-half occupation, rotation-resistant intersection, and coprime cycles. The Birthday protocols act as representatives of NDPs using randomness, in which a node decides to listen, transmit, or sleep with probabilities. The original idea of over-half occupation is to be active over at least half of each period, though several refinements have been proposed to decrease its high duty cycle. Methods of rotation-resistant intersection formulate the problem of discovery using combinatorial characteristics of discrete time slots, and guarantee discovery at least once per period. Moreover, neighbor discovery can also be guaranteed within a worst-case bound, as shown by methods adopting coprime cycles. In this paper, we elaborate on these ideas and present several representative protocols, respectively. In particular, we give an integrative analysis of deterministic protocols via a generic framework. A qualitative comparison incorporating multiple criteria and a quantitative evaluation on energy efficiency are also included. Finally, we point out promising research directions towards energy-efficient neighbor discovery.