,Reducing neighbor discovery latency in docking applications

• 作 者: Shuai-zhao JIN Zi-xiao WANG Ya-bo DONG Dong-ming LU
• 机 构: College of Computer Science and Technology,Zhejiang University,Hangzhou 310027,China“,”Department of
• 出 处: 信息与电子工程前沿（英文版）
• 发表日期: 2019年8期
• 关键词: Neighbor discovery Docking applications Slot index synchronization Mobility-assi

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.