2008/03/12 by Thomas Watteyne, Watteyne, Thomas, Dominique Barthel +5
Computer Science · #Energy Efficient Wireless Sensor Networks #FOS: Computer and information sciences #Mobile Ad Hoc Networks #Networking and Internet Architecture (cs.NI) #Opportunistic and Delay-Tolerant Networks
paper · pdf · doi:10.48550/arxiv.0803.1764
openalex publication_date 2008/03/12 · openalex created_date 2025/10/10 · openalex updated_date 2026/07/28
Experimentation is important when designing communication protocols for Wireless Sensor Networks. Lower-layers have a major impact on upper-layer performance, and the complexity of the phenomena can not be entirely captured by analysis or simulation. In this report, we go through the complete process, from designing an energy-efficient self-organizing communication architecture (MAC, routing and application layers) to real-life experimentation roll-outs. The presented communication architecture includes a MAC protocol which avoids building and maintaining neighborhood tables, and a geographically-inspired routing protocol over virtual coordinates. The application consists of a mobile sink interrogating a wireless sensor network based on the requests issued by a disconnected base station. After the design process of this architecture, we verify it functions correctly by simulation, and we perform a temporal verification. This study is needed to calculate the maximum speed the mobile sink can take. We detail the implementation, and the results of the off-site experimentation (energy consumption at PHY layer, collision probability at MAC layer, and routing). Finally, we report on the real-world deployment where we have mounted the mobile sink node on a radio-controlled airplane.