Controlled mobility in mobile sensor networks: advantages, issues and challenges

Recently, wireless self-organizing networks are attracting a lot of interest in the research community. Moreover, in the last decade many mobile devices have appeared in the market. Exploiting mobility in a wireless environment, instead of considering it as a kind of disturbance, is a fundamental concept that the research community is beginning to appreciate now. Of course, the advantages obtainable through the use of the mobility imply the knowledge of the different types of mobility and the way to include it in the management architecture of the wireless networks. In this work we claim that mobility and wireless sensor networks can be considered as two synergetic elements of the same reality. For this purpose, we sketch a macro-classification of the different objectives which can be pursued by controlled mobility. Moreover, we identify and highlight the interactions between this specific type of mobility and the layers of the control stack. Lastly, this paper reports a case study in which we show how controlled mobility can be exploited practically.