A Novel Communication Architecture to Support Mobile Users in Wireless Sensor Fields

Typical sensor networks consist of a user, a sink, and a number of sensor nodes. The traditional communication architecture usually assumes that there is a legacy networks between a user and a sink. However, in many actual applications users like firefighters and soldiers move around sensor fields and they may not have any direct communication through legacy networks. In other words, a sensor network is the only communication channel between a user and a sink in a practical sensor field. Thus, it is essential to deliberate a novel architecture for the user mobility issue. In this paper, we present a novel communication architecture where a user operates around an infrastructureless sensor field. We, then, propose a new networking model to support user mobility on the novel architecture, named dynamic sink model. In the model a sink is temporarily selected among generic sensor nodes by a user when the user wants to get information from a sensor network. The selected sink gathers data from sensor nodes for interested tasks and propagates collected information to the user via the sensor network. We evaluate and analyze performance of the proposed dynamic sink model on the novel architecture with regard to efficiency of energy consumption, average delay, and delivery ratio, compared with the common static sink model on typical communication architecture