Study of Energy Efficient MAC Protocol for Wireless Sensor Networks

• 1、Beijing University of Posts and Telecommunications

Abstract：In wireless sensor networks, each node is normally powered by battery which can not be replenished or replaced. Therefore, how to improve the energy efficiency is one of the most important issues in wireless sensor networks, and the research on energy efficient MAC protocols is the primary aspect in this field. After the analysis of existing related studies, this paper proposed a novel two-radio architecture based energy efficient MAC protocol named Energy-Efficient-MAC (EE-MAC). This EE-MAC protocol improved the STEM by using some ideas in S-MAC. It introduced a triggered wakeup mechanism to make the data radio periodically listen, which can reduce the probability a full wakeup occurs to improve the energy efficiency in wireless sensor networks. In addition, based on the triggered wakeup, EE-MAC also introduced another mechanism called adaptive listening. It can be used to reduce the latency caused by periodic listening and guarantee energy efficiency at the same time. The basic theory of EE-MAC was illuminated in this paper, and the mathematic analysis and simulation were also given to prove the advantages of this energy efficient MAC protocol in energy efficiency and latency.

Keywords： wireless sensor networks, energy efficiency, energy efficient MAC protocol, latency