Energy-Efficient and Delay-Aware MAC Protocol in Wireless Sensor Networks for Oil and Gas Pipeline Monitoring

Abstract

A flexible and energy efficient media access control (MAC) protocol is the fundament of wireless sensor networks for oil and gas pipeline systems. This paper firstly analyses the typical MAC protocols, three layers architecture of WSNs, and then proposes energy efficient and delay aware MAC (EEDA-MAC) protocol for oil and gas pipeline monitoring. Secondly, two frame structures of EEDA-MAC protocol for long line structure are introduced, and some improvement strategies for EEDA-MAC protocol are proposed and discussed such as energy consumption balance strategies, preambles mechanisms, adaptive and asynchronous competition mechanisms, ladder scheduling mechanisms, which can effectively prolong the network life span and improve the network delay performance. Introduction Pipeline transportation is the most economical way to transport crude oil, natural gas and chemical products due to its lower costs, higher capacity and better consistency than alternative transporting methods such as railroad and highway [1]. In recent years, Wireless sensor networks (WSNs) are developing into main technical method to solve the problem of various kinds of information monitoring [2]. WSNs consist of a large number of energy-limited sensor nodes, which are deployed with random or deterministic way in the monitoring area to automatically sense, process, and transmit all kind of monitored data, without any human intervention. It is obvious that WSNs have many advantages to construct pipeline monitoring systems in the terms of the cost performance, flexible and control efficiency, which can effectively improve the level of management and economic and social benefits. And furthermore, WSNs can work unremittingly without manual intervention and work at the night and abominable weather. Media access control (MAC) protocol is the basis of the communication in WSNs nodes, which controls the wireless channel usage and resource allocation of WSNs, and then MAC protocol affects the energy efficient and delay performance of the network. Therefore, designing a kind of energy efficient and delay aware of MAC protocol to save node energy, prolong the network lifetime and meet delay performance is of great significance. The paper is organized as follows. In the next section, we reviews related works. In Section 3, requirement analysis and related network models are given. Section 4 presents some strategies and the energy-efficient and delay-aware MAC protocol. Finally, the paper is concluded in section 5. etc.