Integrating wireless sensor networks and mobile ad hoc networks for an enhanced end-user experience

Wireless sensor networks (WSNs) sense and aggregate ambient information (e.g. space, environment or physiological data). Ambient information can enhance enduser experience and is made available to end-user applications (which may reside in another network) via gateways. Gateways are usually centralized and fixed. Mobile ad hoc networks (MANETs) are networks that can be deployed “on the fly”. They are useful in situations such as emergency response operations. When the ambient information collected by WSNs is intended for applications residing in a MANET, centralized and fixed gateways are not practicably feasible. This paper proposes an overall two-level overlay architecture to integrate WSNs (with mobile and distributed gateways) and MANETs, for an enhanced end-user experience. It also proposes a new architecture to interconnect the two overlays of the overall architecture. Motivating scenarios are presented, requirements are derived, and the two-level overlay is discussed along with the proposed interconnection architecture. The prototype is also presented.