Energy Efficient Medium Access Control Protocol for Clustered Wireless Sensor Networks with Adaptive Cross-Layer Scheduling.

Maria Sefuba,Tom Walingo,Fambirai Takawira

doi:10.3390/s150924026

Abstract

This paper presents an Energy Efficient Medium Access Control (MAC) protocol for clustered wireless sensor networks that aims to improve energy efficiency and delay performance. The proposed protocol employs an adaptive cross-layer intra-cluster scheduling and an inter-cluster relay selection diversity. The scheduling is based on available data packets and remaining energy level of the source node (SN). This helps to minimize idle listening on nodes without data to transmit as well as reducing control packet overhead. The relay selection diversity is carried out between clusters, by the cluster head (CH), and the base station (BS). The diversity helps to improve network reliability and prolong the network lifetime. Relay selection is determined based on the communication distance, the remaining energy and the channel quality indicator (CQI) for the relay cluster head (RCH). An analytical framework for energy consumption and transmission delay for the proposed MAC protocol is presented in this work. The performance of the proposed MAC protocol is evaluated based on transmission delay, energy consumption, and network lifetime. The results obtained indicate that the proposed MAC protocol provides improved performance than traditional cluster based MAC protocols.

Highlights

The self-organizing nature of micro sensors in Wireless Sensor Networks (WSNs) and their ability to operate without support of predetermined infrastructure makes them effective for data gathering in a variety of areas, even in harsh environments
The network is simulated for 100 immobile sensor nodes randomly distributed over a 2-dimensional geographical network area of 500 m × 500 m
The sensor nodes transceiver module in the proposed model transitions between three states—sleep, active and back off—depending on the schedule. It features a cooperative communication between clusters and the base station

Summary

Introduction

The self-organizing nature of micro sensors in Wireless Sensor Networks (WSNs) and their ability to operate without support of predetermined infrastructure makes them effective for data gathering in a variety of areas, even in harsh environments. Energy consumption remains one of the main design challenges in WSNs, due to the limited energy resource that is supplied by the batteries in the sensor node. It is usually unfeasible to recharge or replace the batteries once the sensor nodes have been deployed due to inaccessible terrains and enormous deployment scale [1]. A thoughtful design of WSNs is required to provide significant benefit to network lifetime by being energy efficient. Research has shown that the sensor node utility that drains the most energy is the radio module during communication mode [2]. The causes of energy waste in the radio module of the sensor node have been identified mainly as idle listening, collisions, overhead and overhearing

Objectives

Results

Conclusion