Reliable communication for mobile MANET-WSN scenarios

Advances in wireless communications have motivated the development of Wireless Sensor Networks (WSNs) for low-cost and easy-deployable physical and environmental monitoring. At the same time, the evolution of portable mobile devices is enabling novel fully integrated internetwork computing scenarios by making viable to opportunistically exploit Mobile Ad-hoc NETwork (MANET) devices traversing the WSN and equipped with a WSN radio to relay part of the WSN traffic over the MANET. The paper proposes an original solution to enable reliable WSN communications between mobile MANET devices and fixed WSN sensors; the primary design guideline is to exploit a local beaconing mechanism together with low-level WSN link monitoring techniques and data retransmissions so to grant reliable communications notwithstanding MANET node mobility. The reported experimental results, collected over a real testbed, confirm the effectiveness of the proposed solution, even under challenging channel contention and device mobility conditions.