A qualitative study of medium access control protocols supporting mobility in wireless sensor networks

In many wireless sensor network (WSN) applications, mobility support has been steadily becoming an important factor in achieving specific tasks. Nevertheless, mobile WSNs are facing several challenges and constraints regarding the wireless medium access that have been already addressed by existing medium access control (MAC) protocols. In fact, these protocols were designed to handle node mobility by considering energy-efficiency and ensure medium access for all network nodes. In our work, we propose a decision-support tool enabling to choose adequate MAC protocol(s) that meet the requirements of a specific target mobile WSN application. This tool will be based on a deep analytical and comparative study of MAC protocols in terms of energy consumption and latency in dynamic contexts. Finally, we apply this approach on an application of wild animals monitoring as an example in order to retain, among the studied MAC protocols, the well-suited ones.