A three-tier middleware architecture supporting bidirectional location tracking of numerous mobile nodes under legacy WSN environment

作者：Lee Dong Kyu; Kim Tae Hyon; Jeong Seol Young; Kang Soon Ju^*

来源：Journal of Systems Architecture, 2011, 57(8): 735-748.

DOI：10.1016/j.sysarc.2011.05.004

• Real-time location system
• Bidirectional mobile asset tracking
• Mobile-stationary co-existence WSN
• Middleware of wireless sensor network

In the mobile asset management services applicable to warehouse, hospital, etc. a low-cost and practical bidirectional location tracking of mobile asset is one of the most important technical issue must be solved. Due to the complexity and heavy traffic of the legacy location-awareness techniques, simultaneous locationing and tracking of numerous mobile nodes in real-time is not easy. To address this problem, we propose the three-tier middleware architecture called uMATI (ubiquitous Mobile Asset Tracking Infra). In the uMATI, all nodes (stationary and mobile) commonly use the IEEE 802.15.4 MAC protocol to guarantee the compatibility with the legacy wireless sensor network (WSN) despite of mobile-stationary nodes co-existence network. To solve the bidirectional tracking in spite of the free mobility of the numerous mobile nodes, we firstly suggest a simple bidirectional location protocol called BLIDx (bidirectional location ID exchange) and its implementation into both the mobile and stationary nodes. In addition, to prevent the traffic overflow due to the concentration of excessive mobile nodes into a single location, we propose adding a specially designed stationary node called virtual sink (VS) node and installing related middleware components into the node. Results from the experimental evaluation prove that the proposed architecture enhanced the practicability by effectively supporting the mobility and managing the traffic in the real-time mobile asset tracking applications.

• 出版日期2011-9