| Abstract: | This paper presents a distributed medium access control (MAC) protocol for low data rate ultra‐wideband (UWB) wireless sensor networks (WSNs), named LA‐MAC. Current MAC proposal is closely coupled to the IEEE 802.15.4a physical layer and it is based on its Impulse‐Radio (IR) paradigm. LA‐MAC protocol amplifies its admission control mechanism with location‐awareness, by exploiting the ranging capability of the UWB signals. The above property leads to accurate interference predictions and blocking assessments that each node in the network can perform locally, limiting at the same time the actions needed to be performed towards the admission phase. LA‐MAC is evaluated through extensive simulations, showing a significant improvement in many critical parameters, such as throughput, admission ratio, energy consumption, and delay, under different traffic load conditions. Copyright © 2010 John Wiley & Sons, Ltd. |
