Efficient Mobile Data Collection with Mobile Collect

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Proactive Highly Ambulatory Sensor Routing (PHASeR) protocol for mobile wireless sensor networks

This paper presents a novel multihop routing protocol for mobile wireless sensor networks called PHASeR (Proactive Highly Ambulatory Sensor Routing). The proposed protocol uses a simple hop-count metric to enable the dynamic and robust routing of data towards the sink in mobile environments. It is motivated by the application of radiation mapping by unmanned vehicles, which requires the reliable and timely delivery of regular measurements to the sink. PHASeR maintains a gradient metric in mobile environments by using a global TDMA MAC layer. It also uses the technique of blind forwarding to pass messages through the network in a multipath manner. PHASeR is analysed mathematically based on packet delivery ratio, average packet delay, throughput and overhead. It is then simulated with varying mobility, scalability and traffic loads. The protocol gives good results over all measures, which suggests that it may also be suitable for a wider array of emerging applications

Amorphous Placement and Retrieval of Sensory Data in Sparse Mobile Ad-Hoc Networks

Abstract—Personal communication devices are increasingly being equipped with sensors that are able to passively collect information from their surroundings – information that could be stored in fairly small local caches. We envision a system in which users of such devices use their collective sensing, storage, and communication resources to query the state of (possibly remote) neighborhoods. The goal of such a system is to achieve the highest query success ratio using the least communication overhead (power). We show that the use of Data Centric Storage (DCS), or directed placement, is a viable approach for achieving this goal, but only when the underlying network is well connected. Alternatively, we propose, amorphous placement, in which sensory samples are cached locally and informed exchanges of cached samples is used to diffuse the sensory data throughout the whole network. In handling queries, the local cache is searched first for potential answers. If unsuccessful, the query is forwarded to one or more direct neighbors for answers. This technique leverages node mobility and caching capabilities to avoid the multi-hop communication overhead of directed placement. Using a simplified mobility model, we provide analytical lower and upper bounds on the ability of amorphous placement to achieve uniform field coverage in one and two dimensions. We show that combining informed shuffling of cached samples upon an encounter between two nodes, with the querying of direct neighbors could lead to significant performance improvements. For instance, under realistic mobility models, our simulation experiments show that amorphous placement achieves 10% to 40% better query answering ratio at a 25% to 35% savings in consumed power over directed placement.National Science Foundation (CNS Cybertrust 0524477, CNS NeTS 0520166, CNS ITR 0205294, EIA RI 0202067

Integration of a Canine Agent in a Wireless Sensor Network for Information Gathering in Search and Rescue Missions

Search and rescue operations in the context of emergency response to human or natural disasters have the major goal of finding potential victims in the shortest possible time. Multi-agent teams, which can include specialized human respondents, robots and canine units, complement the strengths and weaknesses of each agent, like all-terrain mobility or capability to locate human beings. However, efficient coordination of heterogeneous agents requires specific means to locate the agents, and to provide them with the information they require to complete their mission. The major contribution of this work is an application of Wireless Sensor Networks (WSN) to gather information from a multi-agent team and to make it available to the rest of the agents while keeping coverage. In particular, a canine agent has been equipped with a mobile node installed on a harness, providing information about the dog’s location as well as gas levels. The configuration of the mobile node allows for flexible arrangement of the system, being able to integrate static as well as mobile nodes. The gathered information is available at an external database, so that the rest of the agents and the control center can use it in real time. The proposed scheme has been tested in realistic scenarios during search and rescue exercises