Sensor Data Collection Through Gateways in a Highly Mobile Mesh Network

Widely distributed sensors must discover paths back to data collection points possibly through sparsely connected and mobile networks. Current addressing and service discovery schemes in mobile networks are not well-suited to multihop disconnected networks. This paper describes an architecture and protocol for sensor data collection through highly mobile ad-hoc network (MANET) that may never experience end-to-end connectivity. Special gateway nodes are described which are responsible for intelligently routing messages to their intended destination(s). These gateway nodes qualify their links and announce their status to the MANET, a simple approach to service discovery that is effective in this implementation. The protocol is implemented and tested in a laboratory and outdoor environment.