A Study of Various Handover Techniques Using MWSN

Wireless Sensor Network, or WSN, has a large amount of applications such as target tracking, health monitoring and security etc. These applications have been proposed for mobile wireless Sensor Network (MWSN). Mobile Sensor node transmits the data with a fixed node in real time applications. MWSN uses various handover techniques which support the mobility of different coordinators. IEEE 802.15.4 is the standard which is used in these approaches and techniques. Index Terms – WSN; MWSN; mobility; handover; handoff; medium access control protocol Introduction A WSN is used to connect two or more self organizing devices. Self – organizing devices is known as sensor nodes. These sensor nodes send and receive the data in the form of signals. Nodes can operate for long period with a limited battery. Wireless Sensor Network (WSN) has wide range of applications like wildlife monitoring and border security, localization and target tracking etc. WSN works with both static and dynamic situation. WSNs use a sink node which is used to collect sensed data [1]. Taranjeet Kaur et al, International Journal of Computer Science and Mobile Computing, Vol.4 Issue.5, May2015, pg. 635-638 © 2015, IJCSMC All Rights Reserved 636 Mobile wireless Sensor Network (MWSN) is also a WSN in which senor nodes are mobile nodes. It generally used in these days because it supports real time and reliable communication with nodes mobility. Mobile sensor nodes can move freely in infrastructure network. In MWSN mobility procedure, a mobile node can move in any direction within or without in the range.[2] Mobility management in WSN is based on the seamless handover (handoff). In MWSN, when data transfers in the network, causes the problem of handover or handoff. Handoff can be classified in two types: hard handoff and soft handoff. Hard handoff allows to communicating only with one AP at one time, it is also known as break-before-make. On the other hand, Soft handoff allows communicating with multiple APs at the same time, it is also known as makebefore-break.