A survey of protocols for Intermittently Connected Delay-Tolerant Wireless Sensor Networks

Abstract

Intermittently Connected Delay-Tolerant Wireless Sensor Networks (ICDT-WSNs), a branch of Wireless Sensor Networks (WSNs), have features of WSNs and the intermittent connectivity of Delay-Tolerant Networks (DTNs). The applications of ICDT-WSNs are increasing in recent years, however, the communication protocols suitable for this category of networks often fall short. Most of the existing communication protocols are designed for either WSNs or DTNs and tend to be inadequate for direct use in ICDT-WSNs. This survey summarizes characteristics of ICDT-WSNs and their communication protocol requirements, and examines the communication protocols designed for WSNs and DTNs in recent years from the perspective of ICDT-WSNs. Opportunities for future research in ICDT-WSNs are also outlined. 1Most of the existing protocols cannot be directly employed in ICDT-WSNs, since they are either designed for WSNs or DTNs that do not take all limitations of ICDT-WSNs into consideration. Without reliable, robust and efficient communication protocols, the performance of ICDT-WSNs is degraded resulting in shortened network life time, decreased propagation speed and increased packet loss rate. As a consequence, the development of ICDT-WSN applications is constrained.In this article we list the attributes of ICDT-WSNs and the requirements for communication protocols of this category of networks, outline several communication protocols that have been designed in recent years, and evaluate them from the perspective of ICDT-WSNs for improvement opportunities in communication protocols. Some open problems in ICDT-WSNs and possible directions to address these problems are also discussed in this article.The rest of this article is organized as follows: Section 2 gives brief introductions to WSNs and DTNs to provide sufficient background for ICDT-WSNs, and introduces ICDT-WSNs in detail. Transport, network, and link layer communication protocol outlines and evaluations are provided in Section 3. Section 4 gives out open problems in ICDT-WSNs and provides possible solutions. Conclusions are drawn in Section 5. Background Wireless Sensor NetworksWireless Sensor Networks (WSNs) have been extensively studied and widely used in the recent decade. A WSN can consist of one to several types of sensor nodes such as visual, thermal, acoustic, infrared, radar, low sampling rate magnetic, and seismic [1]. WSNs are mission-oriented: all sensor nodes of a WSN cooperate together to accomplish the mission of the network, such as collecting environmental data from a designated area and tracking an object. According to the environment the WSNs are developed for, WSNs can be categorized into terrestrial, underwater or underground:• Terrestrial WSNs are developed above ground, and are usually composed of hundreds to thousands of low-cost sensor nodes [8]. The terrestrial WSNs can be used for environment sensing and monitoring, industry monitoring [9] and surface exploration. Radio Frequency (RF) communication is widely used in terrestrial WSNs. Energy efficiency is v...

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