Mobility increases the connectivity of K-hop clustered wireless networks

Abstract

In this paper we investigate the connectivity for large-scale clustered wireless sensor and ad hoc networks. We study the effect of mobility on the critical transmission range for asymptotic connectivity in k-hop clustered networks, and compare to existing results on non-clustered stationary networks. By introducing k-hop clustering, any packet from a cluster member can reach a cluster head within k hops, and thus the transmission delay is bounded as Θ(1) for any finite k. We first characterize the critical transmission range for connectivity in mobile k-hop clustered networks where all nodes move under either the random walk mobility model with non-trivial velocity or the i.i.d. mobility model. By the term non-trivial velocity, we mean that the velocity of nodes v is Θ(1). We then compare with the critical transmission range for stationary k-hop clustered networks. We also study the transmission power versus delay trade-off and the average energy consumption per flow among different types of networks. We show that random walk mobility with non-trivial velocity increases connectivity in k-hop clustered networks, and thus significantly decreases the energy consumption and improves the power-delay trade-off. The decrease of energy consumption per flow is shown to be Θ(logn/nd}) in clustered networks. These results provide insights on network design and fundamental guidelines on building a large-scale wireless network.