MAC Protocol Switching: A Novel Tool for Performance Adaptation in Wireless Networks

Abstract

This paper presents a distributed MAC protocol switching mechanism for maximizing network throughput in the presence of traffic and topology heterogeneity. The key idea behind dynamic MAC switching is for each node to use its local topology and traffic density information to decide the most suitable MAC protocol that can maximize the MAC layer throughout in the neighborhood. A formal MAC switching rule is developed using analytical formulation of the MAC throughput available in the literature. NS2 based simulation experiments demonstrate that with the proposed MAC switching strategy, nodes in a wireless sensor network are able to achieve maximum MAC throughput by adaptively choosing the appropriate MAC protocol in the presence of heterogeneity in terms of data rate and node population.