Medium Access Control Protocols for Mission Critical Wireless Sensor Networks

Abstract

Wireless sensor networks have variety of applications in military and civilian tracking, habitat monitoring, patient monitoring and industrial control and automation. Many protocols have been developed to support these applications. For applications such as gas leakage detection system, volcanic activities alerts, fire safety systems, border surveillance and tsunami alert systems where apart from energy saving, timely information delivery is also important, an efficient MAC protocol is required. These are termed as mission critical applications. Reducing energy consumption, efficient utilization of bandwidth, Throughput, Latency, Scalability and Adaptability, Reliability, and Degree of Intelligence are the most important parameters of a good MAC protocol designed for mission critical applications. The degree of intelligence is the parameter which is novel to these protocols and will be provided by introducing the Machine learning and Artificial Intelligence. The chapter addresses the design issues for MAC layer, different MAC protocols designed for wireless sensor networks, mission Critical Applications of WSNs and the performance parameters required for Mission Critical MAC Protocols. Various MAC protocols based on contention based and contention free channel access mechanism are discussed in detail in the chapter. Now we are in the era, where each application demands intelligence and automation. For this purpose, there is need to design smart protocols adaptive to critical scenarios. In the chapter the existing MAC protocols and the performance parameters for a mission critical MAC protocol such as throughput, packet delivery ratio, packet loss rate, efficient bandwidth utilization, scalability and adaptability are discussed. A review of machine learning techniques is also done which shows that MAC protocols may be enhanced for their suitability in mission critical scenarios. The chapter also discussed the case study of one mission critical MAC protocol and its comparison with SMAC protocol. The application of mission critical MAC protocol in pipeline leakage detection system is also discussed with its design model. Finally the chapter ends with discussion of recent issues and challenges and future scope of intelligent ML based MAC protocol design.