Comparative Analysis of Contention Based Medium Access Control Protocols for Wireless Sensor Networks

We present a novel TDMA-based medium access control (MAC) protocol for wireless sensor networks. Unlike conventional MAC protocols, which function independently of the application, we introduce an adaptive, information-centric and lightweight MAC (AI-LMAC) protocol that adapts its operation depending on the requirements of the application. We also present a completely localised data management framework that helps capture information about traffic patterns in the network. This information is subsequently used by AI-LMAC to modify its operation. The data management-framework can additionally be used for efficient query dissemination and query optimisation. We present preliminary results showing how the MAC protocol efficiently manages the issues of fairness and latency.

Design of energy efficient medium access control (MAC) protocol for wireless sensor network (WSN) containing mobile nodes is a challenging task. Majority of the MAC protocols for wireless sensor networks assume static sensor nodes, which results in poor performance of such protocols in a network containing mobile nodes. In this paper we propose a MAC protocol which is energy efficient as well as suitable for a WSN containing mobile nodes. The proposed protocol is based on both TDMA and CSMA. It adjusts the frame size to adapt to the changes in mobility and traffic conditions. The performance of the proposed protocol has been compared with LEACH-C protocol. It outperforms LEACH-C in terms of average energy consumption, packet delivery ratio and network life time.

The properties of underwater acoustic channel are quite different from those of terrestrial wireless sensor networks, which brings many challenges to design an efficient media access control (MAC) protocol for underwater acoustic sensor networks (UWASNs). In order to overcome the long propagation delay and the funneling effect of UWASNs, a MAC protocol, named path-oriented code assignment (POCA) CDMA MAC (POCA-CDMA-MAC) protocol, is proposed in the paper. In the proposed protocol, a round-robin method and the CDMA technology are used to make the sink receive packets from multiple neighbors at the same time. Unlike other CDMA-based protocols using the transmitter-oriented code assignment (TOCA) or the receiver-oriented code assignment (ROCA), the POCA is used in the CDMA technology. Since the number of the path is much less than the number of nodes, the length of the spreading code used in systems with POCA is greatly shorter than those of the spreading code used in systems with TOCA or ROCA. Simulation results show that compared to existing MAC protocols for UWASNs, the proposed MAC protocol achieves a higher throughput, and a lower end-to-end delay.

Recent advances in wireless communications and sensor technologies have enabled the development of low-cost wireless sensor networks (WSNs) for a wide range of applications. Medium access control (MAC) protocols play a crucial role in WSNs by enabling the sharing of scarce wireless bandwidth efficiently and fairly. This article provides a survey of the literature on MAC protocols for WSNs. We first briefly describe the unique features of WSNs. We then review representative MAC protocols from the following four categories: contention-based protocols, contention-free (scheduled-based) protocols, hybrid protocols , and preamble sampling protocols. Our discussions focus on the background, main features, operation procedures, major design issues, and the advantages and disadvantages of these protocols. We also present an analysis of the inherent and desirable features of the protocols, and the key challenges of MAC technology for WSNs. Finally, we present our view on future research directions for WSN MAC protocols in a reader-friendly way using illustrative diagrams.

Many energy-efficient asynchronous duty-cycle media access control (MAC) protocols for wireless sensor networks (WSNs) have been proposed in recent years. However, for burst traffic, most of them suffer from significant performance degradation due to randomly waking up to communicate with each other. In this paper, we propose a new asynchronous duty-cycle receiver-initiated MAC protocol called HKMAC. In proposed HKMAC, by adaptively adjusting beacon time of the receiver and scheduling the sender's listening time during scheduled period, it can achieve low end-to-end packet delivery latency and high energy efficiency under burst traffic. We have evaluated the performance of HKMAC through detailed ns-2 simulation. The simulation results show that HKMAC can always reduce end-to-end packet delivery latency and energy consumption under various data rates in different topologies compared with RI-MAC - a state-of-the-art MAC protocol in WSNs.

Recent advancements in wireless communications and electronics have enabled the development of low cost sensor networks. Among the protocols of wireless Sensor Networks (WSN), Medium Access Control (MAC) protocols are given more priority as traditional MAC protocols are not suitable for Wireless communication. As many of the MAC protocols consider the sensor nodes to be stationary, and when these protocols are used in mobile environment the network performance decreases. In this paper, we introduce a new TDMA based MAC protocol which can be used in mobile wireless sensor network. This protocol uses TDMA based MAC scheme where the time will be divided into frames and then time slots. These slots are further divided into sections as channel request (CR), channel allocation (CA) and data section. We will also design an algorithm considering the energy efficiency of a wireless sensor network. Therefore the life time of the sensor nodes deployed in a wireless sensor network will be increased.

Power consumption, latency, and complexity are considered to be a benchmark for comparing Medium Access Control (MAC) protocols in Wireless Sensor Networks (WSN). However, the importance of these elements varies according to the application. In this paper, three MAC protocols are proposed for forest fire detection. Basically, two of these protocols are based on the Carrier Sense Multiple Access with Collision Avoidance (CSMA/CA) protocol with some modification to suit the forest fire detection application. These protocols are called Persistent CSMA (P-CSMA) and Per Hope Synchronization CSMA (PHS-CSMA). The third one is a Time Division Multiple Access (TDMA)-based protocol, called Sensor TDMA (S-TDMA). These three protocols are investigated and analyzed by simulation. Results show that there is no superior protocol which outperforms others in terms of power consumption, delay and complexity. However, a trade-off does exist. In terms of power consumption, S-TDMA outperforms other protocols but it has the worst performance in terms of delay. On the other hand, considering the design complexity, S-TDMA is the most complex as it needs time synchronization over the entire cluster while PCSMA and PHS-CSMA don't require time synchronization between nodes.

Mobility in wireless sensor networks poses unique challenges to the Medium Access Control (MAC) protocol design. Previous MAC protocols for sensor networks assume static sensor nodes and focus on energy-efficiency. In this paper, we present MMAC, a mobility-adaptive, collision-free MAC protocol for mobile sensor networks. MMAC caters for both weak mobility (e.g. topology changes, node joins and node failures) and strong mobility (e.g. concurrent node joins and failures, and physical mobility of nodes). When using MMAC, nodes are allowed to transmit at particular time-slots, based on the traffic information and mobility pattern of the nodes. Allowing transmission at particular time-slots makes MMAC a scheduling-based protocol, thereby guaranteeing collision avoidance. Simulation results indicate that the performance of MMAC is equivalent to that of TRAMA in static sensor network environments. In sensor networks with mobile nodes or high network dynamics, MMAC outperforms existing MAC protocols, including TRAMA and S-MAC, in terms of energy-efficiency, delay and packet delivery.

The industrial Internet of Things (IIoT) depends on wireless sensor networks (WSNs) to enable low‐power, low‐data‐rate communication in resource‐limited settings. While the IEEE 802.15.4 standard provides the communication foundation, its medium access control (MAC) protocols face challenges including energy consumption, latency, scalability, and adaptability. Traditional MAC protocols cannot keep up with the demands of IIoT networks as the number of connected devices continues to increase. Therefore, edge artificial intelligence (Edge AI) and tiny machine learning (TinyML) represent emerging approaches that show potential for improving the performance of traditional MAC protocols directly on IIoT devices. Edge AI and TinyML allow intelligent decision‐making at the edge, which enables efficient data processing and adaptability to the environment without the need for cloud infrastructure, which may reduce latency and energy consumption. This paper systematically examines the emerging paradigm of combining Edge AI and TinyML to improve MAC protocols for WSNs in IIoT networks. We explore advanced machine learning (ML) methods applicable to resource‐limited devices, and we investigate how these methods can improve key performance metrics for MAC protocols, including energy efficiency, throughput, and network lifetime. We also discuss the challenges and limitations of applying AI solutions in WSNs, including computational constraints, data scarcity, and model scalability. Finally, we propose potential future research directions to improve the application of AI and ML techniques to develop more efficient, adaptive, and intelligent MAC protocols for future IIoT networks.

Energy efficiency is a primary consideration in a wireless sensor network (WSN). This is also a major parameter when designing a medium access control (MAC) protocol for WSNs. Hierarchical clustering structure is regarded suitable for WSNs due to its good performance in energy conservation. In this work, an adequately flexible mechanism for clustering WSNs is designed, in which some creative or promotional metrics are utilized, such as cluster head selection algorithm, cluster optional reconstruction, interested data transmission, multiple path routing protocol. All these strategies were cooperated to maximize energy saving of whole system. An appropriate MAC protocol for this mechanism is proposed, by flexibly switching the status of diverse sensor nodes in different strategies. The simulation results show that the proposed MAC protocol is suitable for clustering WSNs and performs well in aspects of energy efficiency, flexibility and scalability.

Due to their limited software and hardware capabilities, wireless sensor nodes are vulnerable against radio jamming. This becomes even worse if energy-efficient jamming is achieved by exploiting knowledge of the data link layer. Encrypting the packets may help to prevent or restrict the jamming. However, due to the nature of the MAC (Media Access Control) protocols, the jammer may take advantage and prevent network communication for relatively long periods even when dealing with encrypted packets. This paper aims to investigate and provide new insights into the security considerations of MAC protocols for wireless sensor networks. The paper also discusses countermeasures for energy-efficient encryption resistant jamming attacks against wireless sensor network MAC protocols.

Medium Access Control (MAC) protocol is one of the key network protocols that ensure Wireless Sensor Networks (WSNs) maintain high performance during communication. MAC protocol design plays an important role in improving the performances of the whole network. First, Wireless Passive Sensor Networks (WPSNs) and MAC protocols are introduced in this paper. Second, some existing MAC protocols are introduced. Sensor MAC (S-MAC) protocol is analyzed and existing improved backoff algorithms are introduced. A new MAC protocol called Improved Sensor MAC (IS-MAC) is then proposed to solve the problem that the contention window (CW) during carrier sense is fixed in S-MAC protocol. IS-MAC protocol is able to adjust CW in terms of network load, so energy consumption can be decreased. Finally, according to the simulation results on NS2, the proposed protocol has better performance in terms of throughput and energy consumption.

Communication is usually the most energy-consuming event on mobile ad hoc networks. Hence, medium access control (MAC) protocols use techniques tomitigate energy consumption on the transmission of data. This chapter presents one such technique, which consists of adjusting the transmission power of the packets. We discuss the fundamentals of transmission power control (TPC), showing their effects in wireless communication and the requirements of TPC solutions. Next, we examine the issues associated with their implementation and show the difficulties of implementing those techniques on real hardware, based on our experience with TPC-aware MAC protocols for wireless sensor networks. We close this chapter with a glimpse of future challenges of TPC-aware MAC protocols on MANETs and WSNs.

Medium access control (MAC) protocols provide a means to nodes to access the wireless medium efficiently and collision free to the best of their ability. In this paper we provide a survey of MAC protocols developed for mobile ad hoc (MANETs) in the past based on certain methods and techniques such as multiple radios, multiple channels and specialized beamforming antennas. We discuss some of the MAC protocols designed for wireless sensor networks (WSNs) and their applicability in a MANET environment. There are some similarities between MANETs and WSN's in general but there is also critical differences between the two that affect the design of MAC protocols for both these networks. Traditionally, MAC protocols have been classified on the basis of two broad categories of contention free and contention based MAC protocols but a number of new algorithms proposed in the recent past merge the two schemes together in a single MAC solution and thus there is a need for a new classification approach. MANETs have their unique constraints and characteristics. In this classification, we will discuss various MAC solutions proposed in the past in the light of these constraints and characteristics. We do not intend to explain each and every protocol since the number of MAC solutions proposed in the past decade or so is very large. The purpose of this article is to give the readers a general idea on the various techniques and methods used in literature to develop MAC protocols for MANETs. The techniques range from algorithmic changes such as cross-layer design to enhancement in hardware such as directional antennas.

The carrier-sensing multiple access with collision avoidance (CSMA/CA) protocol is the most well-known medium access control (MAC) protocol for wireless networks. Both the distributed coordination function (DCF) defined in IEEE 802.11 and the MAC layer defined in IEEE 802.15.4 are based on the CSMA/CA protocol. Nevertheless, these two standards have quite different carrier-sensing mechanisms. Different to continuous carrier sensing in DCF, an IEEE 802.15.4 node only senses the channel once just after a backoff. Sensing-once mechanism can reduce the computation loading on the CPU. However, it significantly increases the probability of failure transmission because a node is not fully aware of channel activity. This paper first proposes a software architecture integrating proper hardware features for designing a DCF-based MAC protocol and then successfully implements it on a low-power transceiver. In addition, this paper conducts experiments in a star topology network to compare the performance of the above DCF-MAC protocol with the IEEE 802.15.4 MAC protocol. Experimental results show that, without continuous sensing, the IEEE 802.15.4 network suffers a high transmission failure probability as the network size increases. Consequently, the proposed DCF-based MAC protocol outperforms the IEEE 802.15.4 MAC protocol in terms of packet loss probability and throughput.