QoS evaluation of energy-efficient ML-MAC protocol for wireless sensor networks

Power management is an important issue in wireless sensor networks (WSNs) because wireless sensor nodes are usually battery powered, and an efficient use of the available battery power becomes an important concern specially for those applications where the system is expected to operate for long durations. This necessity for energy efficient operation of a WSN has prompted the development of new protocols in all layers of the communication stack. If the radio transceiver is the most power consuming component of a typical sensor node, large gains can be achieved at the link layer where the medium access control (MAC) protocol controls the usage of the radio transceiver unit.     

带休眠算法的无线传感器网络MAC协议

由于无线传感器网络中每个传感器节点的能量有限,所以需要有效的MAC协议来保持能量的高效利用。在MAC协议中引入休眠算法是其中一种重要的节能方式。现有的带休眠算法的无线传感器网络MAC协议已有很多种,主要分为2大类:一类是以S-MAC协议为代表的基于休眠/监听排程方案来达到节能目的的MAC协议;另一类是以WiseMAC为代表的基于低功率信道检测方案的MAC协议。对现有的主要几种有代表性的带休眠算法的无线传感器网络MAC协议进行了描述,分析了它们各自的优缺点,并进行了对比和总结。     

SPEECH‐MAC: Special purpose energy‐efficient contention‐based hybrid MAC protocol for WSN and Zigbee network

Energy‐efficient Zigbee‐based wireless sensor network (WSN) occupies a major role in emergency‐based applications. The foremost drawback of such applications is maintaining the battery power because frequent changing is not possible in those conditions. In the earlier days, several researches created new model MAC protocols in terms of increase the lifetime of the WSN. But still, there is a research gap particularly in emergency applications. In order to improve the lifetime of such applications, we introduced a novel hybrid MAC protocol, namely, special purpose energy‐efficient contention‐based hybrid MAC (SPEECH‐MAC) protocol. This protocol includes dual hop concept considerably to save the energy. Both the single hop network and the dual hop networks are developed, and the results are analyzed. Prioritization mechanism for SPEECH‐MAC protocol is introduced to analyze the emergency conditions in detail. In summary, according to the simulation, the calculated parameters are total residual energy, end‐to‐end delay, packet drop, packet delivery ratio, and network throughput.     

An asynchronous low‐power medium access control protocol for wireless sensor networks

Duty cycling is a fundamental approach used in contention‐based medium access control (MAC) protocols for wireless sensor networks (WSNs) to reduce power consumption in sensor nodes. Existing duty cycle‐based MAC protocols use either scheduling or low‐power listening (LPL) to reduce unnecessary energy lost caused by idle listening and overhearing. This paper presents a new asynchronous duty‐cycled MAC protocol for WSN. It introduces a novel dual preamble sampling (DPS) approach to efficiently coordinate channel access among nodes. DPS combines LPL with a short‐strobed preamble approach to significantly reduce the idle‐listening issue in existing asynchronous protocols. We provide detailed analysis of the energy consumption by using well‐known energy models and compare our work with B‐MAC and X‐MAC, two most popular asynchronous duty cycle‐based MAC protocols for WSNs. We also present experimental results based on NS‐2 simulations. We show that depending on the traffic load and preamble length, the proposed MAC protocol improves energy consumption significantly without degrading network performances in terms of delivery ratio and latency. For example, for a traffic rate of 0.1 packets/s and a preamble length of 0.1 s, the average improvement in energy consumption is about 154%. Copyright © 2011 John Wiley & Sons, Ltd.     

A Massive Transmission Scheme in Contention-Based MAC for Wireless Multimedia Sensor Networks

For transmitting the data which is composed of sensed information in sensors, wireless sensor networks have been developed and researched for the improvement of energy efficiency, hence, many MAC protocols in WSN employ the duty cycle mechanism. Since the progressed development of the low power transceiver and processor let the high energy efficiency come true, the delivery of the multimedia data which occurs in the area of sensor work should be needed to provide supplemental information. In this paper, we design a new scheme for massive transmission of large multimedia data where the duty cycle is used in contention based MAC protocol, for WMSN. The proposed scheme can be applied into the previous duty cycle mechanism because it provides two operations between normal operation and massive transmission operation. Measuring the status of the buffer in a sender and the condition of current radio channel can be criteria for the decision of the above two operations. This paper shows the results of the experiment by performing the simulation. The target protocol of the experiment is X-MAC which is contention-based MAC protocol for WSN. Two approaches, both X-MAC which operates only duty cycle mechanism and X-MAC(MTS) which operates combined massive transmission scheme, are used for the comparative.     

Energy-efficient MAC protocols for Wireless Sensor Networks

Designing energy-efficient Medium Access Control (MAC) protocols has a significant influence on the energy performance of wireless sensor network (WSN). In this paper we present a survey of the recent typical MAC protocols regarding energy effi ciency for WSN. According to channel access policies, we classify these protocols into four categories:contention-based, TDMA-based, hybrid, and cross layer protocols, in which the advantages and disadvantages in each class of MAC protocols are discussed. Finally, we point out open research issues that need to carry on to achieve high energy efficiency for the design of MAC protocols in WSN.     

Operation, system architectures, and physical Layer design considerations of distributed MAC protocols for UWB

Impulse-based ultra wideband (I-UWB) is an attractive radio technology for large ad hoc and sensor networks due to its robustness to harmful multipath effects, sub-centimeter ranging ability, simple hardware, and low radiated power. To scale to large sizes, networks often implement distributed medium access control (MAC) protocols. However, most MAC protocols for I-UWB are centralized, and they target small wireless personal area networks and cellular networks. We propose three distributed MAC protocols suitable for I-UWB. Two multichannel protocols, called multichannel pulse sense multiple access (M-PSMA) and multichannel ALOHA achieve high aggregate throughput. A busy-signal protocol, called busy-signal multiple access (BSMA), reduces the energy wasted from re-transmitted packets. This paper describes the three protocols in terms of the protocol's operation, the supporting system architecture, and the I-UWB physical layer. Physical layer simulations confirm the feasibility of implementing the proposed systems and also provide parameters for network simulations. Network simulations show that the throughput of M-PSMA exceeds that of a centralized time-division multiple-access protocol and that the energy efficiency of BSMA far surpasses that of other distributed protocols.     

基于GAF的无线传感器网络MAC协议

节能是无线传感器网络介质访问控制(MAC)协议的首要目标,综合近年来MAC协议的研究成果,针对S-MAC、T-MAC等几种典型协议进行分析,研究出将拓扑结构控制机制引入MAC协议,可进一步降低能耗。给出了一种基于GAF拓扑控制思想的MAC协议、GS-MAC协议。GS-MAC协议可以降低处于空闲侦听状态的节点数量,是一种高效节能的协议。仿真表明,引入拓扑控制后可以达到进一步节约能耗的目的。     

无线传感器网络MAC层协议的分析比较

无线传感器网络是一种由大量廉价微型传感器节点组成,并通过无线通信方式形成的多跳自组织网络,可用于对其部署区域的某些物理量进行智能监测。由于传感器节点数目较大,MAC协议是保证无线传感器网络高效通信的关键网络协议之一。另一方面,因为传感器节点受到电源能量有限、通信能力有限、计算和存储能力有限等现实条件的限制,传感器网络中的MAC协议又具有一些独特之处。对无线传感器网络MAC协议的研究现状进行较全面的考察,分析比较其中的几种典型MAC协议,并提出了该领域的发展趋势和未来工作的一些思路。     

A prediction-based asynchronous MAC protocol for heavy traffic load in wireless sensor networks

Radio transceiver often consumes most of energy in a sensor node. To achieve low power consumption, every node periodically schedules its radio transceiver into sleep or active state, which is usually called duty cycle mechanism in MAC protocol. In this paper, we design a novel Prediction-Based Asynchronous MAC protocol (PBA-MAC) for heavy traffic load in wireless sensor networks. PBA-MAC applies an efficient wakeup mechanism to save the energy of a sensor node as much as possible. It reduces communication cost by enabling a sender to predict the intended receiver’s wakeup time, without introducing unnecessary idle listening or overhearing cost. In addition, it introduces an exponential advance mechanism to handle the prediction error caused by clock drift and hardware platform latency. More importantly, its backcast-based retransmission characteristic can efficiently resolve severe wireless collisions caused by concurrent traffic flows. The PBA-MAC is implemented in Contiki operating system. We compare PBA-MAC to some existing energy-efficient MAC protocols. The experimental results show that PBA-MAC significantly improves network energy efficiency and reduces packet delivery latency even under heavy traffic load.     

SyncWUF: An Ultra Low-Power MAC Protocol for Wireless Sensor Networks

In wireless sensor networks, power consumption is one of the key design issues because a large number of sensor nodes are powered by cheap batteries. Switching the RF transceiver, which is one of the biggest power consumers in a sensor node, to low-power sleep mode as much as possible has been proven to be a very efficient way to save power with a factor of tens or even hundreds. So far, several schemes have been proposed to reduce the duty cycle of the RF transceiver by MAC layer scheduling. Among them, the wake-up-frame scheme and the WiseMAC are two very efficient protocols based on the so-called preamble sampling technology. This paper proposes combining these two schemes to obtain a further optimized low-power MAC protocol, called SyncWUF, for low-traffic wireless sensor network. Analytical and simulation results prove that our proposal achieves significant battery lifetime gain in different application cases without negatively affecting other important system parameters such as channel capacity and latency     

Impact of MAC frame length on energy efficiency in 6LowPAN

To reach necessary end-to-end connectivity between the Internet and wireless sensor networks （WSNs）, the Internet Engineering Task Force （IETF） IPv6 over low power wireless personal area network （6LowPAN） working group has been established and introduced an adaptation layer for integration of IEEE 802.15.4 physical layer/media access control （PHY/MAC） layers and the upper layers of any Intemet protocol （IP）-based networks, such as the Internet. The energy efficiency is one of the most important performance measures in WSNs because most sensor nodes are only battery powered so we should reduce the energy consumption to the lowest to extend the life of nodes. Therefore the determination of MAC frame length should be carefully considered since that the radio frequency （RF） module consumes most the energy of a sensor node meanwhile the MAC protocol is the direct controller of RF module. In this paper, we provide a star-shaped 6LowPAN non-beacon mode with unslotted carrier sense multiple access with collision avoidance （CSMA/CA） mechanism to access to the channel and model the stochastic behavior of a target end node as the M/G/1 queuing system. Analytical expressions for some parameters such as channel busy probability, packet loss probability and energy efficiency are obtained in this paper and our analytical results can clearly show the impact of MAC frame length on the energy efficiency of a target node in both ideal and lossy channel.     

无线传感器网络休眠MAC协议分析

无线传感器网络中每个传感器节点一般采用电池供电,能量有限,需要有效的可休眠的MAC协议来保持能量的高效利用,因此休眠MAC协议成为研究的重要方向之一。目前已经有很多种为无线传感器网络设计的MAC协议,其中一个重要的分支就是基于局部同步周期休眠／监听排程的S-MAC协议及其各种改进协议。论文首先介绍了无线传感器网络中与MAC协议设计相关的一些特性。其次对S-MAC协议的基本原理以及各种改进协议的原理进行了说明,并分析了它们各自的优缺点。     

A Sensor Network Cross-Layer Power Control Algorithm that Incorporates Multiple-Access Interference

This paper presents a wireless sensor network (WSN) transmit power control algorithm designed to minimize WSN node energy consumption. The algorithm determines transmit power levels using an optimization that accounts for energy consumed by the physical and link layers of the protocol stack. This cross-layer optimization incorporates a physical layer model that uses knowledge of the WSN medium access control (MAC) layer algorithm to accurately model multiple access interference (MAI). Analytical and simulation results show that accounting for MAI in this fashion results in a significant energy savings relative to comparable WSN power control algorithms.     

Energy efficient TDMA-based MAC protocol associated with GAF for wireless sensor networks

The design of media access control (MAC) protocol for wireless sensor networks (WSNs) with the idea of cross layer attracts more and more attention. People can improve the MAC protocol by obtaining certain information regarding the network layer and physical layer. This article synthesizes and optimizes certain cross-layer protocols which have existed. On the basis of the routing, topology information in the network layer, and transmission power information in the physical layer, the time slot assignment algorithm has been improved in the MAC layer. By using geographical adaptive fidelity algorithm (GAF) to divide the grids, controlling of transmission power and scheduling the work/sleep duty cycle for sensor nodes, a new MAC protocol has been proposed to decrease energy consumption and enlarge the lifetime of WSNs. Simulation results show that the MAC protocol functions well.     

移动代理WSN网络中信道Sift MAC协议

介绍了一种采用移动代理的无线传感器(WSN)网络,该网络系统由移动代理节点负责复杂数据处理、接入处理、数据转发传输、路由维护等工作,与一般WSN网络相比具有节能优势。该网络系统MAC层采用S-ALOHA协议,不仅网络吞吐量低而且能耗大,依据网络结构特点提出了采用基于信噪比(SNR)的信道Sift协议。仿真验证该协议大大提高了网络吞吐量和降低了网络系统能耗。     

Performance comparison of battery power consumption in wireless multiple access protocols

Energy efficiency is an important issue in mobile wireless networks since the battery life of mobile terminals is limited. Conservation of battery power has been addressed using many techniques such as variable speed CPUs, flash memory, disk spindowns, and so on. We believe that energy conservation should be an important factor in the design of networking protocols for mobile wireless networks. In particular, this paper addresses energy efficiency in medium access control (MAC) protocols for wireless networks. The paper develops a framework to study the energy consumption of a MAC protocol from the transceiver usage perspective. This framework is then applied to compare the performance of a set of protocols that includes IEEE 802.11, ECMAC, PRMA, MDRTDMA, and DQRUMA*. The performance metrics considered are transmitter and receiver usage times for packet transmission and reception. The time estimates are then combined with power ratings for a Proxim RangeLAN2 radio card to obtain an estimate of the energy consumed for MAC related activities. The analysis here shows that protocols that aim to reduce the number of contentions perform better from an energy consumption perspective. The receiver usage time, however, tends to be higher for protocols that require the mobile to sense the medium before attempting transmission. The paper also provides a set of principles that could be applied when designing access protocols for wireless networks.*ECMAC: energyconserving MAC. PRMA: packet reservation multiple access. MDRTDMA: multiservices dynamic reservation TDMA. DQRUMA: distributedqueuing request update multiple access.     

JAVeLEN – An ultra-low energy ad hoc wireless network

Wireless networks are often very lightly used. Some wireless networks, most notably sensor networks, are also energy-constrained – that is, the period of time during which the network is operational depends on battery lifetime. We have designed and simulated a novel design for a mobile ad hoc network with a low offered load (of approximately 1% average loading) that uses dramatically less (often 300 times or 99.7% less) power than industry standard protocols and yet achieves higher delivery reliability, handles substantially greater node densities, supports mobility, and has the ability to perform well even under high offered loads. Several innovations were required to achieve this efficiency, most notably the design of a dual-radio transceiver and careful redesign of the protocol stack (physical, media access, routing and transport protocols) to make effective use of the power of the radio transceivers.     

MAC Protocols for Energy Harvesting Wireless Sensor Networks: Survey

Energy harvesting (EH) technology in the field of wireless sensor networks (WSNs) is gaining increasing popularity through removing the burden of having to replace/recharge depleted energy sources by energy harvester devices. EH provides an alternative source of energy from the surrounding environment; therefore, by exploiting the EH process, WSNs can achieve a perpetual lifetime. In view of this, emphasis is being placed on the design of new medium access control (MAC) protocols that aim to maximize the lifetime of WSNs by using the maximum possible amount of harvested energy instead of saving any residual energy, given that the rate of energy harvested is greater than that which is consumed. Various MAC protocols with the objective of exploiting ambient energy have been proposed for energy‐harvesting WSNs (EH‐WSNs). In this paper, first, the fundamental properties of EH‐WSN architecture are outlined. Then, several MAC protocols proposed for EH‐WSNs are presented, describing their operating principles and underlying features. To give an insight into future research directions, open research issues (key ideas) with respect to design trade‐offs are discussed at the end of this paper.