Abstract
Medium access control (MAC) protocols play a vital role in making effective use of a multiple access channel as it governs the achievable performance such as channel utilization and corresponding quality of service of wireless sensor networks (WSNs). In this paper, a virtual carrier sensing directional hub (VSDH) MAC protocol incorporating realistic directional antenna patterns is proposed for directional single hub centralized WSNs. While in most instances, MAC protocols assume idealized directional antenna patterns, the proposed VSDH-MAC protocol incorporates realistic directional antenna patterns to deliver enhanced link performance. We demonstrate that the use of directional antennas with a suitable MAC protocol can provide enhanced communication range and increased throughput with reduced energy consumption at each node, compared to the case when only omnidirectional antennas are used. For the scenarios considered in this study, results show that the average transmit power of the sensor nodes can be reduced by a factor of two, and at the same time offer significantly extended lifetime.
Highlights
Wireless sensor networks (WSNs) have been employed in a wide range of health care, industrial and environmental monitoring applications [1,2,3]
Interference, lack of fairness and energy consumption are the key constraints in WSNs, which poses challenges to the design of medium access control (MAC) protocols
In [5], we proposed a simple directional hub MAC protocol for star topology WSNs based on the Pure Aloha protocol, in which the performance differences between a realistic directional antenna pattern and idealized directional antenna pattern were demonstrated
Summary
Wireless sensor networks (WSNs) have been employed in a wide range of health care, industrial and environmental monitoring applications [1,2,3]. Interference, lack of fairness and energy consumption are the key constraints in WSNs, which poses challenges to the design of medium access control (MAC) protocols. In order to make the best use of directional antennas, suitable MAC protocols must be designed. Contention-based protocols can be less efficient than those without contention in terms of throughput performance for large star topologies due to the large number of collisions when the data traffic offered load is high. They are simpler and typically provide lower delay in smaller WSNs [4].
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