Energy Efficient MAC Protocol Research Articles

A Study on the Wireless Body Area Network MAC Protocol Using Dynamic Superframe for e-Health IoT

One of the most remarkable applications of the Internet of Things is health monitoring. Wireless body area networks (WBANs) consist of several body sensors implanted in or place on a human body and a coordinator. One of the essential issues of WBANs is the design of Medium Access Control (MAC) protocol to improve system efficiency. In this paper, we modify the IEEE 802.15.4 standard MAC superframe structure and propose an energy-efficient MAC protocol for WBANs in the e-Health Internet of Things (IoT) systems. In this scheme, the time slots are divided into mini-slots. The lengths of the contention access period and the contention free period are both variable. By using this mechanism, the utility of time slots can be considerably increased.

TRIPLEPR-MAC: A Triple Queue Priority Based Medium Access Control Protocol for Wireless Sensor Network

Background: WSN is a network of smart tiny electromechanical devices named sensors. Sensors perform various tasks like sensing the environment as per its range, transmitting the data using transmission units, storing the data in the storage unit and performing an action based on the captured data. As they are installed in an unfriendly environment, recharging the sensors is not possible every time which leads to a limited lifetime of the network. To enhance the life of a sensor network, the network requires energy-efficient protocols. Various energy-efficient MAC protocols have been developed by the research community, but very few of them are integrated with the priority-based environment which performs priority-based data transmission. Another challenge of WSN is that most of the WSN areas are delay-sensitive because it is implemented in critical fields like military, disaster management, and health monitoring. Energy, delay, and throughput are major quality factors that affect the sensor network. Objective: In this paper, the aim is to design and develop a MAC Protocol for a field like the military where the system requires energy efficiency and priority-based data transmission. Method: In the proposed model, a cluster-based network with priority queues is formed that can achieve higher power efficiency and less delay for sensitive data. Results: In this research, the simulation of proposed MAC, TMAC and SMAC is done with different numbers of nodes, same inter-packet intervals, and variant inter-packet intervals. Based on the script simulation, result graphs are generated. Conclusion: The proposed work achieves greater lifetime compared to TMAC and SMAC using priority-based data transmission.

An Energy Efficient Adaptive Wake-Up Radio MAC (EEAWuR-MAC) Protocol for IoT Wireless Body Area Networks

In this paper an improved adaptive energy efficient MAC (EEAWuR-MAC) protocol is proposed to handle emergency data transmission in internet of things wireless body area networks (WBANs) by incorporating the wake-up radio (WuR) mechanism. In WuR based WBANs a body node starts data transmission in an on-demand manner by sending a WuR-message (WuM). The WuR based MAC (WuR-MAC) protocols reduces the latency of data transmission and saves more energy in contrast to duty-cycling MAC protocols. Therefore, the superiority of WuR mechanism over duty-cycling shifts the trend towards WuR-MAC protocols. Furthermore, the investigation of emergency data (ED) handling mechanisms is still required at MAC layer. It is observed that inappropriately configuring the 802.15.4 MAC parameters may lead to performance deterioration in terms of energy efficiency and quality of service (QoS) such as throughput and delay. Therefore, a substantial modification in the existing IEEE 802.15.4 super-frame structure is essentially required for efficiently handling the ED transmission. The proposed protocol employs a modified superframe structure of IEEE 802.15.4 MAC, mainly designed for ultra-low power medical applications under normal and emergency traffic conditions concurrently without any interruption. A systematic analytical framework is developed to derive the mathematical expressions based on M/G/1/2 queuing model to evaluate the performance of proposed protocol in terms of throughput, delay and energy consumption and its validation is carried out using MATLAB simulation.

PrEEMAC: Priority based energy efficient MAC protocol for Wireless Body Sensor Networks

Wearable wireless sensors, or Wireless Body Sensor Network (WBSN), is one of the most recent fields of research in healthcare applications. The sensors are placed on the human body to detect the critical medical parameters and transmit the collected data to a centralized node. Though the devices work at low energy and power constraints, maintenance of such devices is a crucial aspect. In light of this requirement, an efficient medium access control (MAC) protocol should be utilized to extend the life time of the network. In this paper, we propose a new “Priority based Energy Efficient (PrEE) MAC protocol” incorporated with various priorities in predefined devices based on data sensing and normal devices changing to priority when the value is more than the threshold, by modifying IEEE 802.15.4 header bits. The PrEE MAC protocol is designed based on the IEEE 802.15.4 and its Superframe structure. The simulation results show that the energy efficiency and lifetime of the proposed MAC protocol is more as compared to the existing MAC protocol.

An energy efficient hybrid MAC protocol for smart home networks

In this paper cluster-based hybrid MAC (CB-HMAC) protocol, based on IEEE 802.15.4 MAC is proposed for smart home networks. The CB-HMAC is specially designed for short packet transmission in a dense home network environment. Simulation results show that the proposed CB-HMAC is more energy-efficient than other medium access control (MAC) protocols without sacrificing much delay and throughput.

ECM-MAC: An Efficient Collision Mitigation Strategy in Contention Based MAC Protocol

Medium Access Control (MAC) is the sub-layer of data link layer in the communication OSI model, whose basic function is to control the hardware that interacts with the transmission medium. In Wireless sensor network, the communication is done without any wired connectivity and the sensor nodes get energy through batteries. MAC layer protocol is classified as contention based and contention free. Over the years, these protocols have served efficiently in controlling the data transmission, yet they have some compromising and challenging issues, and data collision is one of them. Contention based protocols are reported to be more vulnerable to collisions, as they allow sharing of channels among transmitting nodes. Collisions result in message delay, data loss and retransmissions, resultantly demanding more energy. Researchers are trying their best to reduce the collisions during transmission. This research is aimed to evaluate the priority-based collision control in contention-based protocol. We present a new technique Energy efficient Collison mitigation MAC (ECM-MAC) protocol to handle the QoS and energy constraints for variety of applications. ECM-MAC uses different contention window and node priority mechanism to get the overall performance of the network. Nodes with most important data or with least residual energy will be allowed to transmit first, thereby minimizing the chances of collisions and maximizing the lifespan of the network. In case of high level of collision, the data traffic will be intelligently reduced to minimize the collisions. A contention-based MAC protocol is evaluated to compare the impacts of suggested mechanism with the standard protocol. It will be useful for designers to develop a better collision avoiding contention-based protocol. In wireless Sensor Networks (WSNs), a sensor node is typically comprising detection unit, transceiver unit (to send and receive the data packets), processing unit and an energy supply unit for energy provisioning. Enhancement in network lifetime is an important and major challenge in WSNs. Since the transceiver unit has more impact on the energy consumption of the node and its reduction results in significant improvement on network lifetime. In our work, we propose an efficient mechanism that prioritized the nodes to get the high performance in quality of service. MAC protocol is targeted to achieve this, as MAC layer has the authority access to the transmission channel. We prioritize the nodes with lower energy to increase the chances of that node to get access of the transmission channel before their power and battery ran out. Our proposed strategy outperforms other protocols in terms of content retrieval Time, retransmissions and energy efficiency.

Channel Resource Scheduling for Stringent Demand of Emergency Data Transmission in WBANs

Media access control (MAC) plays a pivotal role in ensuring proper operation in wireless body area networks (WBANs). However, current solutions still cannot satisfy the stringent requirements of low power and low delay for emergency data reporting. In this paper, we propose an energy-efficient and emergency-aware MAC (EEEA-MAC) protocol for meeting such a rigorous demand. First, we design a node-different channel access scheme, in which source nodes use the CSMA/CA pattern while relay nodes adopt the hybrid CSMA/CA-TDMA pattern. Second, we devise an emergency-first time-slot allocation scheme, in which channel sensing is performed and the emergency data is handled by relay nodes according to different cases. EEEA-MAC has two striking features. One is that, source nodes adopt the CSMA/CA scheme instead of the conventional CSMA/CA-TDMA scheme, ensuring the requirement because there are almost no collisions and no confirmation messages in this scheme. The other is that, relay nodes use a sensing-based emergency data handling mechanism instead of the traditional empty-slot occupying mechanism, further guaranteeing the requirement owing to the immediate handling of emergency data and the short time of channel sensing. Extensive simulations demonstrate the advantages of EEEA-MAC in terms of energy dissipation and latency.

Medium Access Control Protocols for Flying Ad Hoc Networks: A Review

Recently, flying ad hoc networks (FANETs) have been broadly applied to various civilian and military applications. Medium access control (MAC) protocols have attracted significant attention because of their impact on overall network performance. Owing to peculiar features such as high mobility and dynamic topology, however, the design of a MAC protocol for FANETs confronts challenges. Several MAC protocols for FANETs have been reported in literature. In early MAC protocols for FANETs, delay, throughput, and collision detection were the key design concerns. Recently, however, the design of an energy-efficient MAC protocol has become a new research focus. To the best of the authors’ knowledge, there exists no survey on MAC protocols for FANETs. This study extensively investigates the existing MAC protocols for FANETs. In this paper, the MAC design issues in FANETs are presented first. Subsequently, the existing MAC protocols are reviewed and discussed from the perspective of major features, operational principles, advantages, and limitations. The MAC protocols are then qualitatively compared in terms of major features, characteristics, and performance factors. Furthermore, open issues and research challenges are summarized and discussed.

A Survey on Energy-Efficient Strategies in Static Wireless Sensor Networks

A comprehensive analysis on the energy-efficient strategy in static Wireless Sensor Networks (WSNs) that are not equipped with any energy harvesting modules is conducted in this article. First, a novel generic mathematical definition of Energy Efficiency (EE) is proposed, which takes the acquisition rate of valid data, the total energy consumption, and the network lifetime of WSNs into consideration simultaneously. To the best of our knowledge, this is the first time that the EE of WSNs is mathematically defined. The energy consumption characteristics of each individual sensor node and the whole network are expounded at length. Accordingly, the concepts concerning EE, namely the Energy-Efficient Means, the Energy-Efficient Tier, and the Energy-Efficient Perspective, are proposed. Subsequently, the relevant energy-efficient strategies proposed from 2002 to 2019 are tracked and reviewed. Specifically, they respectively are classified into five categories: the Energy-Efficient Media Access Control protocol, the Mobile Node Assistance Scheme, the Energy-Efficient Clustering Scheme, the Energy-Efficient Routing Scheme, and the Compressive Sensing--based Scheme. A detailed elaboration on both of the basic principle and the evolution of them is made. Finally, further analysis on the categories is made and the related conclusion is drawn. To be specific, the interdependence among them, the relationships between each of them, and the Energy-Efficient Means, the Energy-Efficient Tier, and the Energy-Efficient Perspective are analyzed in detail. In addition, the specific applicable scenarios for each of them and the relevant statistical analysis are detailed. The proportion and the number of citations for each category are illustrated by the statistical chart. In addition, the existing opportunities and challenges facing WSNs in the context of the new computing paradigm and the feasible direction concerning EE in the future are pointed out.

Energy-Efficient Asynchronous QoS MAC Protocol for Wireless Sensor Networks

In recent years, wireless sensor networks (WSNs) have gained significant attention in both industry and academia. In WSNs, each sensor node is normally equipped with a small-size battery with finite capacity. Hence, energy-efficient communication is considered a key factor for the extension of network lifetime. Formerly, a large number of medium access control (MAC) protocols have been proposed to improve energy efficiency to prolong the network lifetime. There are applications that generate different types of data packets and require quality of service (QoS) without any disruption in network operation. Therefore, these applications need an energy-efficient QoS MAC protocol that can support QoS by considering energy efficiency as the primary goal to avoid any failure in the network. This article proposes an energy-efficient asynchronous QoS (AQSen) MAC protocol, called AQSen-MAC. The AQSen-MAC considers different types of data packets and uses two novel techniques: self-adaptation and scheduling to enhance energy efficiency, packet delivery ratio, and network throughput. Furthermore, in the protocol, the receiver adjusts its duty cycle according to the remaining energy to prolong the network operation. Finally, the performance of the AQSen-MAC protocol has been evaluated through detailed simulation using Castalia and compared with MPQ-MAC, PMME-MAC, and QAEE-MAC protocols. The simulation results indicate that the AQSen-MAC protocol significantly reduces the energy consumption at the receiver of up to 13.4%, consumption per bit of up to 3% and improves the packet delivery ratio and network throughput of up to 12% in the network.

A Survey on the Evolution of Opportunistic Routing with Asynchronous Duty-Cycled MAC in Wireless Sensor Networks.

Wireless sensor networks (WSNs) have been used for environmental monitoring and reporting for many decades. Energy consumption is a significant research topic because wireless sensor nodes are battery-operated to be highly energy-constrained. Several strategies have been introduced in routing and MAC (Medium Access Control) layer protocols to facilitate energy saving. At the routing layer, an energy-efficient routing protocol, known as opportunistic routing (OR), has been designed to improve efficiency. OR achieves energy efficiency via load-balancing, which forwards packets along multiple routes over WSNs. At the MAC layer, an energy-efficient MAC protocol known as the asynchronous duty-cycled MAC (ADCM) protocol achieves energy saving by turning on and off a sensor node’s transmitter and receiver to eliminate unnecessary energy wastage. These protocols each have their own advantages and disadvantages. OR achieves energy efficiency at the routing layer but it raises an issue at the MAC layer. ADCM achieves energy efficiency at the MAC layer, but it hinders the packet forwarding efficiency of the OR. To attain better energy efficiency, a combination of these two ideas led to the development of OR with asynchronous duty-cycled MAC (OR-ADCM). However, even with better energy efficiency, limitations still exist in combining load-balancing and duty-cycling due to conflicts in the inherent properties of OR and ADCM. In this paper, we present a survey of the evolution of OR-ADCM over WSNs to help the reader better understand and appreciate the details of this tradeoff, which we hope will lead to the development of better protocol designs.

Energy-efficient hybrid MAC protocol for railway monitoring sensor network

In the present work, a new protocol is proposed i.e. application-specific hybrid medium access control (ASHMAC) to efficiently handle data traffic generation in the railway track condition monitoring system. ASHMAC protocol is an improved version of the bit-map-assisted (BMA) medium access control (MAC) protocol by which it can efficiently handle continuous monitoring data traffic as well. Simulation and mathematical models have been developed and proposed for ASHMAC protocol. Its performance is compared with the other MAC protocols. The results reveal that the proposed protocol consumes 25–50% less energy w.r.t. time division multiple access (TDMA), energy-efficient TDMA, and BMA at low to medium data traffic conditions. For high data traffic conditions, the energy consumption of the proposed ASHMAC protocol is approximately equal to the other protocols. The transmission latency of ASHMAC is approximately 50% less than energy-efficient BMA. Both analytical and simulation results show the overall superiority of the proposed protocol.

Performance Analysis of Energy Efficient and Reliable Protocols for Intra & Inter Cluster Communications in Wireless Sensor Networks

The discovery and the use of many wireless technologies are paving way for new remote monitoring applications. The sensing devices are becoming popular because of their flexibility, performance, low cost and portability. Wireless Sensor Networks (WSN) is a good alternative to wired systems because of easy deployment in remote areas. Wireless Sensor Networks are used in different domains for various applications because of their salient characteristics like reduced power consumption, scalability, ability to respond immediately within a short span of time, reliability, dynamic in nature, low cost and easy installation. The main objective of this paper work is to find a suitable energy efficient, scalable and reliable communication protocols for intra-cluster and intercluster communication. Therefore the proposed research work follows three different phases. To achieve the desired results, the proposed research work concentrates on three protocols namely Energy Efficient and Reliable Clustering Routing Protocol (EERCRP), Energy Efficient and Reliable MAC Protocol (EERMAC) and Energy Efficient and Reliable Hybrid Transport Protocol (EERHTP).EERCRP and EERMAC are intra-cluster communication protocols that help in cluster formation and effective data sensing. EERHTP is a transport layer protocol that is used for inter-cluster communication. All the above protocols are evaluated using network simulator NS2 for their performance analysis. EERCRP is compared with PASCC and PCDCC which from the root level header node are existing congestion and queue based hybrid clustering protocols. The proposed EERCRP follows hierarchical cluster formation where the leader node is selected based on queue length, residual energy of the node and distance. It is efficient than the existing methods in terms of energy and reliability metrics.EERMAC is compared with existing MAC protocols namely SMAC, IEEE 802.11 EDCA and EA-MAC. SMAC follows traditional TDMA or CSMA method of data access. They are suitable only for periodic data sensing. The proposed EERMAC allows hybrid data sensing consisting of both periodic and event based data which are classified using priority levels. Event based data is assigned higher priority than periodic data. Queues are used for storing both types of data using various levels of threshold values. EERMAC uses CSMA/CA method for event based data. Variable TDMA method is used for event based and periodic data. EERHTP is a transport layer protocol that uses two types of reliability models namely ACK and NACK depending on the type of data. All the three protocols are evaluated both for energy and reliability metrics such as total energy consumption, residual energy comparison, energy consumption per packet, packet delivery ratio, delay, packet drop, jitter, throughput and network routing overhead. Thus it is concluded that all the three protocols are more optimal than the existing protocols and prove to be the best protocols for intracluster and inter-cluster communications.

An Efficient Dynamic Slot Scheduling Algorithm for WSN MAC: A Distributed Approach

In the current scenario, the growth of IoT based solutions gives rise to the rapid utilisation of WSN. With energy constraint sensor nodes in WSN, the design of energy efficient MAC protocol along with timeliness requirement to handle collision is of paramount importance. Most of the MAC protocols designed for a sensor network follows either contention or scheduled based approach. Contention based approach adapts well to topology changes, whereas it is more costly in handling collision as compared to a schedule based approach. Hence, to reduce the collision along with timeliness, an effective TDMA based slot scheduling algorithm needs to be designed. In this paper, we propose a TDMA based algorithm named DYSS that meets both the timeliness and energy efficiency in handling the collision. This algorithm finds an effective way of preparing the initial schedule by using the average two-hop neighbors count. Finally, the remaining un-allotted nodes are dynamically assigned to slots using a novel approach. The efficiency of the algorithm is evaluated in terms of the number of slots allotted and time elapsed to construct the schedule using the Castalia simulator.

Energy-Efficient and Fast MAC Protocol in UAV-Aided Wireless Sensor Networks for Time-Critical Applications.

Unmanned aerial vehicle (UAV)-aided wireless sensor networks (UWSNs) can be effectively used for time-critical sensing applications. UAVs can be used to collect the sensed data from sensors and transfer them to a base station. The real-time transfer of data is highly desired in the time-critical applications. However, the medium access control (MAC) protocols designed for UWSNs so far are primarily focused on the efficient use of UAVs to collect data in the sensing areas. In this paper, we propose an energy-efficient and fast MAC (EF-MAC) protocol in UWSNs for time-critical sensing applications. EF-MAC adopts carrier sense multiple access (CSMA) for the registration of sensor nodes with a UAV and time division multiple access (TDMA) with variable slot time for the transmission of collected data. The UAV is equipped with two transceivers to minimize both energy consumption and delay in air-to-ground communication. The energy consumption and delay are formally analyzed and the performance of EF-MAC is evaluated via extensive simulation. The simulation results show that the proposed EF-MAC outperforms the conventional MAC protocols in terms of energy efficiency and communication delay.

Survey: energy efficient protocols using radio scheduling in wireless sensor network

An efficient energy management scheme is crucial factor for design and implementation of any sensor network. Almost all sensor networks are structured with numerous small sized, low cost sensor devices which are scattered over the large area. To improvise the network performance by high throughput with minimum energy consumption, an energy efficient radio scheduling MAC protocol is effective solution, since MAC layer has the capability to collaborate with distributed wireless networks. The present survey study provides relevant research work towards radio scheduling mechanism in the design of energy efficient wireless sensor networks (WSNs). The various radio scheduling protocols are exist in the literature, which has some limitations. Therefore, it is require developing a new energy efficient radio scheduling protocol to perform multi tasks with minimum energy consumption (e.g. data transmission). The most of research studies paying more attention towards to enhance the overall network lifetime with the aim of using energy efficient scheduling protocol. In that context, this survey study overviews the different categories of MAC based radio scheduling protocols and those protocols are measured by evaluating their data transmission capability, energy efficiency, and network performance. With the extensive analysis of existing works, many research challenges are stated. Also provides future directions for new WSN design at the end of this survey.

Energy Efficient Mobility Aware Clustering Hybrid MAC Protocol in WSN

Mobility in Wireless Sensor Networks (WSN) poses many challenges to design Medium Access Control (MAC) protocol. In this paper, Energy efficient clustering Mobility Hybrid MAC (EMH-MAC) protocol is introduces to manage throughput, delay and energy consumption in WSN. EMH-MAC protocol merges the features of synchronous and asynchronous MAC protocols. EMH-MAC works in two stages: Clustering and Data transmission stage. In the clustering stage MMCDD protocol is used for election of Cluster Head (CH). Data transmission stage works in four segments: two-hop neighbor information, intra-semi synchronous, inter-synchronous communication and data transfer. EMH-MAC is evaluated using Network Simulator-3 and performance is compared with BN-MAC. Simulation results show that EMH-MAC performs well in comparison with BN-MAC in terms of throughput, delay and energy consumption by varying number of nodes and speed of nodes.

Prioritized data based Energy Efficient MAC protocol in Wireless Body Area Network

Wireless Body Area Network (WBAN) is an exclusively designed Wireless Sensor Networks that used in today’s health-care system. The central challenge in WBAN is to transfer the medical data with limited energy and with high reliability. The IEEE 802.15.4 MAC Protocol is a standard model used to consume less energy by providing low data rate. This paper aimed to present a novel protocol PD-MAC, an enhanced version of IEEE 802.15.4 to achieve the above goal. The main objective of this protocol is to transmit the packets according to their priorities. It also improves the retransmission and packet drop process by introducing an additional slot to define Starvation Index in the super-frame of IEEE 802.15.4. A node has to start its transmission when the timer is set to zero. A node has to sense the channel status before transmission begins. The data are transmitted according to their priorities only when it senses the free channel. However if the channel is not free then retransmission of packet will be carried out and in each retransmission process the starvation index increments the priority of the packet. When the packet priority raises to high then it transmits the packet by considering it as high emergency packet. For energy efficiency a max limit is define to retransmit a data packet. This protocol has been simulated using Castalia 3.2 environment and the result validate that our proposed protocol provides better service in terms of least Packet Delay and lowest Energy Consumption to its counterparts.

A Novel Hybrid MAC Protocol for Sustainable Delay-Tolerant Wireless Sensor Networks

Efficient MAC protocols are fundamental to conserve energy and enable sustainable delay-tolerant sensor networks (DTSNs). They can be explored to reduce energy consumption, deal with relaxed latency requirements, support mobility and address diverse traffic loads. In this paper, we theoretically analyze the performance of reservation-based and contention-based MAC protocols in DTSNs regarding throughput and energy consumption, respectively. According to the derived theoretical results, we propose a TRaffic-adaptive energy-efficient MAC protocol (TREEM) to achieve better data transmissions as well as energy efficiency, in order to satisfy DTSN requirements. More precisely, our protocol can dynamically switch its working mode between contention and reservation to adapt to the varying data traffic. In addition, to further improve the energy efficiency of DTSN, our algorithm can also calculate the more suitable duty/active period length. The simulation results of TREEM demonstrate better performance in terms of energy efficiency and traffic adaptability than the schedule-based MAC protocol TDMA, the contention-based protocol CSMA, and the traffic-adaptive protocol TRAMA under mobile DTSN environments.

An energy efficient distributed queuing random access (EE-DQRA) MAC protocol for wireless body sensor networks

In wireless sensor networks, a significant amount of energy is consumed by the sensor nodes during data packet transmission and reception. An IEEE 802.15.4 MAC protocol is not able to completely satisfy all the requirements of wireless body sensor networks (BSNs) in a healthcare environment. Hence there is a demand for the design of a new scalable and energy saving MAC protocols. In this paper the challenging healthcare requirements are considered and based upon these requirements, an energy efficient distributed queuing random access (EE-DQRA) MAC protocol is proposed for BSN scenarios which utilizes the concept of distributed queuing for enhanced radio channel utilization. The theoretical analysis of energy efficient EE-DQRA MAC protocol is being carried out systematically considering the limitations of IEEE 802.15.4 and DQ-MAC protocol. Further, EE-DQRA performance is validated with IEEE 802.15.4 system parameters using computer simulations. The effect of relative traffic load and payload length on the energy consumption, delay and throughput are also analyzed. The simulation results shows that the proposed EE-DQRA MAC with M/M/K queuing has better energy performance than the existing DQ-MAC and IEEE 802.15.4 MAC in BSN scenarios due to collisionless transmission in the data transmission queuing (DTQ) module while keeping the control packet overhead smaller in collision resolution queuing (CRQ) module. It is also evident that EE-DQRA requires a minimum delay in comparison to IEEE802.15.4 and DQ-MAC, due to overhead minimization and M/M/K queuing utilization in DTQ system.