An Analysis Of The Collection Tree Protocol (Ctp) In Mobile Sensing Environments

The Collection Tree Protocol (CTP) is widely used for data collection in wireless sensor network applications due to its simplicity and its capability to dynamically adapt to ad-hoc changes in the network even though it is designed for static networks. With the increasing deployment of mobile wireless sensor networks, the performance of this scheme in mobile scenarios becomes extremely important. The motivation in using collection style protocols in mobile sensor networks is that the sensors primarily send data to key collecting nodes, and often there is no need for the more complex Mobile and Ad hoc routing protocols that are typically used in MANETs or the formation of clusters. Our objective in this paper is to provide a detailed analysis of the shortcomings of CTP in mobile scenarios, and to propose changes to CTP to improve its performance in mobile scenarios. This is done by a comprehensive simulation study of CTP's performance in mobile sensor environments, and identify root causes for its performance degradation in mobile scenarios. We also study the impact of introducing a mix of mobile and fixed nodes in a CTP network and evaluate how their presence improves network performance. Our results show that the performance of CTP in mobile environments. We conclude with proposed changes to CTP that improve its performance in mobile scenarios.