Joint Neighbor Discovery and Communication in Wireless Sensor Networks

Ad hoc wireless sensor networks are capable of dynamically adapting to nodes joining or leaving. For this, they often require an always-on central coordinator, making it impossible to have all nodes in the network operate on battery power. This can be solved by using neighbor discovery algorithms. However, how the actual communication happens is usually not discussed in this context. We present a protocol based on the most recent neighbor discovery algorithms, capable of also exchanging data, while at the same time quickly adapting to changes in the network without the need for coordinating nodes. Specifically, we show the suitability of the protocol for periodic sensor data transmission in a smart logistics use case. We evaluate the protocol through extensive simulations, which show that it performs well, also with many nodes present, while still achieving multi-year operation on a small-sized battery.