Scan-Line IP Assignment for Wireless Sensor Networks

Connecting wireless sensor networks (WSN) with TCP/IP is an important issue in many WSN applications. Recently, there are many solutions proposed to integrate WSN and TCP/IP network. Running the TCP/IP protocol directly on WSN is one of the most important solution models. In this model, a unique IP address is needed for every node in WSN. The spatial IP assignment (SIPA) method enables every sensor node to have an IP address by constructing address via node location. However, it does not guarantee to assign a unique IP address to every node. This paper proposes the scan-line IP assignment (SLIPA) method which makes sure that not only every sensor node will generate a unique IP address but also the spatial relation between nodes is maintained after assignment. Our experiments show that SLIPA can achieve dramatic improvements in the maximum number of nodes that can be successfully assigned under different distribution patterns of nodes.