MoX-MAC: A low power and efficient access delay for mobile wireless sensor networks

Mobility management in Wireless Sensor Networks (WSNs) is a complex problem that must be taken into account in all layers of the protocol stack. But this mobility becomes very challenging at the MAC level in order to do not degrade the energy efficiency between sensor nodes that are in communication. However, among medium access protocols, sampling protocols reflect better the dynamics of such scenarios. Nevertheless, the main problem, of such protocols, remains the management of collisions and idle listening between nodes. Previous approaches like B-MAC and X-MAC, based on sampling protocols present some shortcomings. Therefore, we address the mobility issue of WSNs that use as medium access sampling protocols. It is worth noticing that sampling protocols remain the most adaptive protocols for dynamic scenarios. In this paper, we propose a mobile access solution based on the X-MAC protocol which remains a reference protocol. This proposal, called MoX-MAC, incorporates different mechanisms in order to mitigate the energy consumption of mobile sensor nodes. Through an extensive experimental validation, we show that MoX-MAC enables to reduce the energy consumption of sensor nodes, as well the medium access delay of node with respect to the channel, and the average packets loss.