Mobility Handling in MAC for Wireless Ad Hoc Networks

Wireless Sensor Networks (WSNs) are becoming popular in a wide variety of applications. In a WSN, sensor nodes can be static or mobile, depending on applications. Handling mobility in a sensor network can pose interesting challenges in sensor protocol design, and special algorithms are needed to adapt to mobility in the network. In this paper, we survey the current state of art in handling mobility in sensor networks. We first study how mobility affects the design of different layers in the sensor network architecture, and then take a closer look at mobility handling in the MAC layer. We also describe the results of simulations that we conducted to compare and analyze existing mobility-aware MAC protocols. Finally, we discuss open issues in dealing with mobility in sensor networks. Copyright © 2008 John Wiley & Sons, Ltd