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Reducing neighbor discovery latency in docking applications

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Abstract

Neighbor discovery is important for docking applications, where mobile nodes communicate with static nodes situated at various rendezvous points. Among the existing neighbor discovery protocols, the probabilistic methods perform well in average cases but they have aperiodic, unpredictable, and unbounded discovery latency. Yet, deterministic protocols can provide bounded worst-case discovery latency by sacrificing the average-case performance. In this study, we propose a mobility-assisted slot index synchronization (MASS), which is a new synchronization technique that can improve the average-case performance of deterministic neighbor discovery protocols via slot index synchronization without incurring additional energy consumption. Furthermore, we propose an optimized beacon strategy in MASS to mitigate beaconing collisions, which can lead to discovery failures in situations where multiple neighbors are in the vicinity. We evaluate MASS with theoretical analysis and simulations using real traces from a tourist tracking system deployed at the Mogao Grottoes, which is a famous cultural heritage site in China. We show that MASS can reduce the average discovery latency of state-of-the-art deterministic neighbor discovery protocols by up to two orders of magnitude.

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Correspondence to Shuai-zhao Jin.

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Shuai-zhao JIN, Zi-xiao WANG, Ya-bo DONG, and Dong-ming LU declare that they have no conflict of interest.

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Project supported by the National High-Tech R&D Program of China (No. 2012AA101701), the National Key Technology Support Program of China (Nos. 2013BAK01B00 and 2014BAK16B00), and Grotto Temples Digital Protection of Cultural Relics and Equipment Upgrading of National Cultural Heritage Administration Scientific Research Institutes

A preliminary version was presented at the 12th International Conference on Mobile Ad Hoc and Sensor Systems, October 19–22, 2015, USA

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Jin, Sz., Wang, Zx., Dong, Yb. et al. Reducing neighbor discovery latency in docking applications. Frontiers Inf Technol Electronic Eng 20, 1147–1164 (2019). https://doi.org/10.1631/FITEE.1800412

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  • DOI: https://doi.org/10.1631/FITEE.1800412

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