Network Initialization in Low-Power Wireless Networks: A Comprehensive Study

The increasing growth of low-power wireless networks in real-world implementations has intensified the need to develop well-organized key network building blocks. Neighbor discovery, link quality measurement and data collection are among the fundamental building blocks of network initialization process. Over the past decade, network initialization has attracted significant attention from the research community of low-power wireless networks. Accordingly, the general concern of this paper is to survey neighbor discovery, link evaluation and collection tree construction protocols, as well as, research challenges in these research areas. Furthermore, we explore the impacts of these protocols on the functionality of different layers in the network protocol stack. In order to provide a clear view of the state-of-the-art neighbor discovery approaches, this paper also presents a classification of the existing neighbor discovery protocols. Finally, some of the important open issues in developing network initialization protocols are discussed to present new directions for further research.