CADC: Congestion Aware Duty Cycle mechanism a simulation evaluation

Abstract

In WSNs idle listening is a major source of energy consumption. Devices can maximise battery, and hence network, lifetime by keeping their radio transceivers off when not needed. We propose CADC, a new Congestion Aware Duty Cycle (DC) MAC protocol, for 6LoWPANs. This protocol uses a new mechanism for the adaptation of the Radio Duty Cycle (RDC), that reacts quickly to changing traffic loads and patterns. CADC is independent of network topology, operating protocols and applications and does not require any clock synchronisation between the nodes. Through simulation, we highlight that in static duty cycle MACs there is always a trade-off between energy-efficiency and performance leading to increased energy consumption and low throughput in certain networks. Additionally, it is shown that dynamic protocols can overcome the constraints observed in static DC MACs. CADC outperforms other previously proposed static and dynamic duty cycle protocols in terms of energy consumption, packet loss and goodput while it achieves competitive delay times.