SMLMAC-HEAP: Slotted Multi-Layer MAC Protocol for Wireless Sensor Networks Powered by Ambient Energy Harvesting

Abstract

Objectives: To study the lifetime of Wireless Sensor Network (WSN) as well as to propose and simulate a suitable approach so that the Quality-of-Service (QoS) of the network in terms of throughput improved when compared with the previous methods. Methods: The lifetime of WSN depends on the MAC layer because energy consumption is more due to the sharing access of media. Our approach is designed not only to adopt the division of the MAC layer into a number of slots by keeping both listen and sleep mode but also using the solar harvested energy; hence, the network’s lifetime is improved with the compared protocol. Our approach with compared protocol is simulated through MATLAB simulator on EZ430-RF2500-SHE” (Datasheet of Texas Instruments’). Findings: In WSN, we found that energy consumption is more at the MAC layer, so network performance degrades in terms of lifetime. To solve the issue of energy consumption in WSN, researchers focused on and designed several techniques to improve the MAC layer. To bring out the practicality of the proposed protocol, we present a case study on the variation of layers with slots in terms of throughput metrics. Finally, the simulation result shows that the proposed protocol performs better than MLMAC-HEAP, Probabilistic Polling and Optimal Polling from layer 7 with slot 7. Novelty: The proposed approach merges the two concepts; one is by using the ambient solar energy, and the other, by adopting slot concepts for each layer of MAC. Keywords: MAC; MLMAC; MLMAC-HEAP; WSN