M-MAC: Mobility-Based Link Management Protocol for Mobile Sensor Networks

In wireless sensor networks with mobile sensors, frequent link failures caused by node mobility generate wasteful retransmissions, resulting in increased energy consumption and decreased network performance. In this paper we propose a new link management protocol called M-MAC that can dynamically measure and predict the link quality. Based on the projected link status information each node may drop, relay, or selectively forward a packet, avoiding unnecessary retransmissions. Our simulation results show that M-MAC can effectively reduce the per-node energy consumption by as much as 25.8% while improving the network performance compared to a traditional sensor network MAC protocol in the case of both low and high mobility scenarios.