Abstract
As Wireless Sensor Networks (WSNs) grow in popularity, researchers are now focusing more on some challenging issues that significantly degrade overall performance, such as energy hole mitigation, link asymmetry minimization, etc. Link asymmetry is a problem that arises when the coverage distance between two adjacent nodes varies. It creates an obstacle to overcome when designing an efficient Medium Access Control (MAC) protocol for WSNs with low duty-cycling. This phenomenon poses an especially difficult challenge for receiver-initiated asynchronous MAC protocols, which are popular due to their relatively higher energy efficiency. Exploiting the benefits of cooperative communication has emerged as one of the viable solutions to overcome this limitation. Cooperative communication in WSNs has received a lot of attention in recent years. Many researchers have worked to create a MAC layer supporting cooperative communication. However, the association of cooperative communication with an asymmetric link is not studied in the literature. In this research work, COASYM-MAC, a cooperative asynchronous MAC protocol for WSNs, is proposed based on a receiver-initiated MAC protocol that uses the fact that nodes have alternate paths between them to reduce link asymmetry. A key feature of the proposed protocol is that the optimal helper node is selected automatically in case of link asymmetry. Simulations exhibited that COASYM-MAC performs significantly better than a state-of-the-art MAC protocol for WSNs that handles asymmetric links, ASYM-MAC.
Highlights
Wireless Sensor Networks (WSNs) are one of the most promising technologies in decades.WSNs are frequently utilized in applications such as medical, autonomous vehicles, networking, smart homes, environmental areas and other emergency applications [1,2,3,4,5,6,7,8]
The time needed to transition from receiver-initiated mode to sender-initiated mode was 1 s using ASYM-Medium Access Control (MAC), which is equal to the waiting time (t) of the proposed protocol
Link asymmetry poses a major challenge for many wireless sensor network based applications that require high reliability as well as stringent QoS parameters
Summary
Wireless Sensor Networks (WSNs) are one of the most promising technologies in decades. Non-uniform residual energy of sensor nodes is another major cause of link asymmetry Interference is another significant factor that causes asymmetric link. It is observed from test-bed results that asymmetric links mostly occur due to low transmission power In such cases, nodes fail to transmit data which eventually make the network almost non-functioning. Link asymmetry is a key factor that adversely affect receiver initiated asynchronous MAC protocols to a great extent where nodes mostly remain in sleep mode to save more energy. Unlike ASYM-MAC, this scheme can deal with the asymmetric link scenario more strictly in low power WSNs. For effective helper selection, we propose a wake-up schedule algorithm for each node by which the most efficient node among sender’s neighbors wakes up early to send its beacon.
Sign-in/Register to view highlights & summary Sign-in/Register to access full text options 
Talk to us
Join us for a 30 min session where you can share your feedback and ask us any queries you have
Schedule a callDisclaimer: All third-party content on this website/platform is and will remain the property of their respective owners and is provided on "as is" basis without any warranties, express or implied. Use of third-party content does not indicate any affiliation, sponsorship with or endorsement by them. Any references to third-party content is to identify the corresponding services and shall be considered fair use under The CopyrightLaw.
