Efficient Group Mobility for Heterogeneous Sensor Networks

Mobility management protocols allow wireless devices to move between networks. These protocols have traditionally supported the mobility of individual nodes and are therefore not optimized to support the migration of groups. Accordingly, the time required to re-establish connectivity, frequency of dropped packets and contention for the air interface increase significantly for mobile groups. We propose a protocol for mobile groups that reduces all of the above by allowing a single node to perform handoffs on behalf of all group members. This "gateway" node eliminates the need for multiple handoff messages by obscuring group membership to external parties. Through extensive simulation and implementation, we show significant reduction in handoff times, message complexity and packet loss for groups of heterogeneous, mobile sensors running AODV and DSDV. By leveraging the naturally occurring hierarchy, we demonstrate that it is possible for groups to efficiently use traditional mobility protocols to support their collective movements.