Robotic Wireless Sensor Networks

In this chapter, we present a literature survey of an emerging, cutting-edge, and multi-disciplinary field of research at the intersection of Robotics and Wireless Sensor Networks (WSN) which we refer to as Robotic Wireless Sensor Networks (RWSN). We define a RWSN as an autonomous networked multi-robot system that aims to achieve certain sensing goals while meeting and maintaining certain communication performance requirements, through cooperative control, learning and adaptation. While both of the component areas, i.e., Robotics and WSN, are very well-known and well-explored, there exist a whole set of new opportunities and research directions at the intersection of these two fields which are relatively or even completely unexplored. One such example would be the use of a set of robotic routers to set up a temporary communication path between a sender and a receiver that uses the controlled mobility to the advantage of packet routing. We find that there exist only a limited number of articles to be directly categorized as RWSN related works whereas there exist a range of articles in the robotics and the WSN literature that are also relevant to this new field of research. To connect the dots, we first identify the core problems and research trends related to RWSN such as connectivity, localization, routing, and robust flow of information. Next, we classify the existing research on RWSN as well as the relevant state-of-the-arts from robotics and WSN community according to the problems and trends identified in the first step. Lastly, we analyze what is missing in the existing literature, and identify topics that require more research attention in the future

Intra-domain mobility management

Mobility supporting protocols are designed to provide connectivity of mobile nodes from any point of attachment to the Internet. Fast handoff, low signaling overhead and packet loss are the key factors to be addressed in designing a mobility management protocol. This work proposes Intra Domain Mobility Management (IDMM) protocol, based on micro-mobility concept. The protocol implements an efficient tracking mechanism for locating the mobile nodes and ensures that their movements remain transparent to communicating nodes. The protocol is designed with the hierarchical tree topology in mind that allows for low cost solution and efficient management. The optimized routing enables fast delivery of packets to the mobile node in the micro-mobility domain. IDMM is implemented using Network Simulator (ns2) tools. Packet loss, throughput, delay in the network and traffic overhead due to location management are studied. The comparison with major mobility protocols such as Mobile IP and Cellular IP is done to demonstrate the performance of IDMM under high frequency of roaming