A+MAC: A Streamlined Variable Duty-Cycle MAC Protocol for Wireless Sensor Networks. (26th September 2013)

• Record Type: Journal Article
• Authors: Lee, Sang Hoon; Choi, Lynn
• Other Names: Kim Tai-hoon Academic Editor.
• Is Part Of: International journal of distributed sensor networks. (2013)
• Publication Date: 2013-09-26
• Subjects: Sensor networks -- Periodicals; Intelligent agents (Computer software) -- Periodicals; Multisensor data fusion -- Periodicals; 681.2
• DOI: 10.1155/2013/784509
• Languages: English
• ISSNs: 1550-1329

Abstract

Abstract : To improve the energy efficiency and the transmission performance of a sensor network MAC protocol under time varying traffic conditions, recent researches have adopted a variable duty cycle operation that makes each node dynamically adjust its own wakeup and sleep schedule according to a predefined trigger condition. However, most of the existing protocols still waste energy on a long preamble packet for waking up a receiver or long idle listening for checking potential communications. To address the energy waste problem, this paper introduces a hybrid MAC protocol called A+MAC that exploits a complementary cooperation between CSMA/CA and preamble sampling. In A+MAC CSMA/CA is used for carrying out communication processes, and preamble sampling is used for checking potential communications. Therefore, A+MAC minimizes both idle listening and the length of a preamble packet by exploiting a short preamble that makes nodes check only the event occurrence. A+MAC also optimizes control packet formats and eliminates both virtual carrier sensing and a separate clock synchronization period from conventional CSMA/CA based MAC protocols. We evaluated both the energy and the network performance of the protocol by using both NS-2 and MICA2 platforms. Our experimentation results show that A+MAC can achieve an order of magnitude energy savings while providing near optimal latency compared to the existing solutions.