Computationally-Light Metrics to Quantify Link Stability in Mobile Sensor Networks

We propose three innovative location and mobility-independent computationally-light metrics to quantify the stability of links in mobile sensor networks (MSNs). The proposed metrics (Normalized Neighbor Degree: NND, One Hop Two Hop Neighbors: OTH, and Fraction of Shared and Unshared Neighbors: FSU) are computed on the egocentric network of an edge and the hypothesis is that larger the extent of shared neighborhood between the end vertices of an edge, larger the stability (lifetime) of the link in the MSN. The computation times of all the three metrics are about 15–40 times lower than the computation times of the bipartivity index (BPI) and algebraic connectivity (ALGC) metrics that were adapted from Network Science in an earlier research to quantify link stability in MSNs. The lifetimes of the DG trees obtained with the proposed computationally-light link stability metrics are appreciably larger or comparable to that of the ALGC and BPI-based DG trees.