Effects of mobility on latency in a WSN that accommodates mobile nodes

Several applications have been proposed for mobile wireless sensor networks. Some of these applications require the transfer of a large amount of data in a short period of time. This is challenging, since mobility can lead to a deterioration in the quality of an established link. Frequent link disconnection may in turn require a mobile node to repeatedly establish new links with the surrounding relay nodes to proceed with the data transfer. The new link establishment may cause extra data communication latency and make most of the applications delay sensitive. To evaluate the effect of mobility on latency, this paper first sets up a mathematical model based on a hybrid medium access control (MAC) protocol in mobile scenarios. It then uses NS2 simulation to further analyze the latency associated with mobility. Both results show that the latency increases with an increment in the network density and the duty cycle.