EE-Hybrid MAC Protocol for Wireless Sensor Networks

Abstract

MAC protocol design in Wireless sensor networks becomes vibrant research field for the past several years. In this paper an EE-Hybrid MAC protocol (Energy efficient hybrid Medium Access Control) has been proposed, which is energy efficient and low latency MAC protocol, which uses interrupt method to assign priority for certain wireless sensor nodes assumed to be present in critical loops of industrial process control domain. EE-Hybrid MAC overcomes some of the limitations in the existing approaches. Industrial wireless sensor network require a suitable MAC protocol which offers energy efficiency and capable of handling emergency situations in industrial automation domain. Time critical and mission critical applications demands not only energy efficiency but strict timeliness and reliability. Harsh environmental condition and dynamic network topologies may cause industrial sensor to malfunction, so the developed protocol must adapt to changing topology and harsh environment. Most of the existing MAC protocols have number of limitations for industrial application domain In industrial automation scenario, certain sensor loops are found to be time critical, where data’s have to be transferred without any further delay. The proposed EE-Hybrid MAC protocol is simulated in NS2 environment, from the result it is observed that proposed protocol provides better performance compared to the conventional MAC protocols.