Use of a Switched Beam Antenna in a Star Wireless Sensor Network for Data Collection: Neighbor Discovery Problem

Switched beam antennas (SBA) offer many advantages when used in confined and obstructed environments that represent a difficult radio propagation environment. However to benefit from these antennas, some low layer mechanisms such as MAC (Medium Access Control) protocols, routing protocols and neighbor discovery protocols which are primarily designed to work with omnidirectional antennas need to be redesigned. In this paper, a new neighbor discovery method based on time slotting and random algorithm is proposed. The proposed method is designed for a sink node in a star network and equipped with a switched beam antenna to discover its neighboring nodes. The proposed protocol was implemented in Contiki OS, and several simulations were performed using Cooja. Results show that our protocol gives better performance in terms of delay.