A Comparison Between Neighbour Discovery Protocols in Low Duty-Cycled Wireless Sensor Networks?

Wireless sensor networks are applied in a wide variety of applications, such as environment monitoring, target tracking and so on. Neighbour discovery process is an important component of wireless sensor network’s access and basic communication. Duty-cycle based wireless sensor networks can save energy, but challenges the process of neighbour discovery. A comparison between neighbour discovery protocols in low duty-cycled wireless sensor networks is made and a classification of discovery protocols is proposed, i.e. random neighbour discovery and deterministic neighbour discovery. In particular, we analyze the deterministic neighbour discovery protocols in detailed. A qualitative comparison incorporating multiple criteria and a quantitative evaluation on energy efficiency are also included. Finally, the author indicates making full use of neighbour discovery protocol in real deployment is the key of future neighbour discovery protocol design.