Title: Urbihoc: a delay tolerant approach for data acquisition in urban areas using a mobile wireless sensor network

Authors: Martha Montes-de-Oca; Javier Gomez; Miguel Lopez-Guerrero

Addresses: Department of Electrical Engineering, Metropolitan Autonomous University, Iztapalapa campus, Mexico City, 09340, Mexico ' Department of Telecommunications, National Autonomous University of Mexico, Ciudad Universitaria, Mexico City, 04510, Mexico ' Department of Electrical Engineering, Metropolitan Autonomous University, Iztapalapa Campus, Mexico City, 09340, Mexico

Abstract: In recent years several pieces of research have proposed the use of wireless mobile nodes to sense a wide diversity of phenomena in urban areas. Data collected by mobile sensors are typically sent to a central server in order to be shared with other users through cellular or WiFi networks. Unfortunately, the cost of deploying and maintaining such infrastructure may be prohibitively high. Furthermore, a disaster situation on the server side may cause the failure of the whole system. As an alternative approach, in this work we introduce Urbihoc, a data acquisition method that uses opportunistic transmissions to directly share data among mobile nodes. In this way, from local exchanges, Urbihoc builds up global knowledge about a monitored phenomenon. Our results suggest that, in some applications, it is possible to monitor a phenomenon over a large metropolitan area by using only the resources contributed by mobile users.

Keywords: wireless sensors networks; mobile crowdsensing; energy saving; urban sensing; delay tolerant approach.

DOI: 10.1504/IJSNET.2019.097557

International Journal of Sensor Networks, 2019 Vol.29 No.1, pp.16 - 27

Accepted: 15 Jul 2018
Published online: 28 Jan 2019 *

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