Targeting an increasing number of potential application domains, wireless sensor networks (WSN) have been the subject of intense research, in an attempt to optimize their performance while guaranteeing reliability in highly demanding scenarios. However, hardware constraints have limited their application, and real deployments have demonstrated that WSNs have difficulties in coping with complex communication tasks – such as mobility – in addition to application-related tasks. Mobility support in WSNs is crucial for a very high percentage of application scenarios and, most notably, for the Internet of Things. It is, thus, important to know the existing solutions for mobility in WSNs, identifying their main characteristics and limitations. With this in mind, the talk firstly addresses the state-of-the-art for mobility support in WSNs, as well as the corresponding challenges. Subsequently, the Network of Proxies (NoP) assisted mobility approach is presented. NoP relieves resource-constrained WSN nodes from the heavy procedures inherent to mobility management. The presented approach was implemented and evaluated in a real platform, demonstrating not only its advantages over conventional solutions, but also its very good performance in the simultaneous handling of several mobile nodes, leading to high handoff success rate and low handoff time.

Keywords: wireless sensor networks, mobility, 6LoWPAN, proxies.

About Fernando Boavida

Fernando Boavida received his PhD in Informatics Engineering in 1990, and he is currently Full Professor in the Department of Informatics Engineering (DEI) of the Faculty of Sciences and Technology of the University of Coimbra. He was the founder of the Laboratory of Communications and Telematics (LCT) of DEI, the Strategic Director for Communications and Information Technology of the University of Coimbra from October 2003 to December 2015, the Director of the Department of Informatics Engineering from February 2004 to January 2008, and the Director of the Centre for Informatics and Systems of the University of Coimbra (http://cisuc.uc.pt) from October 2013 to September 2015.

His main research interests are wireless sensor networks, mobility, quality of service, and computer networks in general. He is author/co-author of more than 170 international publications (books, book chapters, refereed journals and conference proceedings) and 50 national publications. He was the chairman of the Program Committee of QofIS’2001, IDMS-PROMS’2002, NETWORKING 2006, WWIC 2007, FMN 2008, EWSN 2010, FMN 2012, IWQoS 2012, ACM SIGCOMM FhMN 2013, Mobiquitous 2015, and WoWMoM 2016 international conferences/workshops. He has been involved in numerous program committees of major international conferences, including INFOCOM 2006 and 2007, and has participated in many European projects, such as E-NEXT (FP6 Network of Excellence on Emerging Networking Experiments and Technologies) EuQoS (End-to-end Quality of Service support over heterogeneous networks, IST-FP6-2004-004503), WEIRD (WiMAX Extension to Isolated Research Data networks, IST FP6 Integrated Project 034622), OpenNet (Open Interconnect for the Internet Community, IST-FP6 Specific Support Action 035185), CONTENT (Content Networks and Services for Home Users, IST-FP6-0384239), GINSENG (Performance Control in Wireless Sensor Networks”, ICT-FP7-224282) and MICIE (Tool for systemic risk analysis and secure mediation of data ex-changed across linked CI information infrastructures”, ICT-FP7-225353). He is a senior member of the IEEE and a licensed Professional Engineer. He is a member of the Editorial Advisory Board of the Computer Communications journal.

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This event will be conducted in English