Advanced MAC protocol with energy-efficiency for wireless sensor networks

Abstract

This paper proposes E2-MAC, a contention-based energy-efficient Medium Access Control (MAC) Protocol for wireless sensor networks. Energy efficiency is primary goal in wireless sensor networks. Existing MAC protocols for sensor networks attempt to solve energy consumption problem caused by idle listening using an active/sleep duty cycle. Since there are various traffic conditions, however, they may not always provide improvements in energy consumption. We propose a MAC protocol algorithm that stores data in a buffer and transmits data when the buffer exceeds a threshold value so that energy efficiency is always guaranteed for any network traffic conditions. Analytical results show that our proposed algorithm has significant improvements in energy consumption compared to the existing MAC protocols for sensor networks. © Springer-Verlag Berlin Heidelberg 2005.