Cross-layer optimization of Low Power Listening MAC protocols for Wireless Sensor Networks

In monitoring wireless sensor networks (WSNs) with event-driven applications, the generated traffic usually has bursty characteristics when an event occurs. Transient congestion in the networks would increase delay and packet loss rate severely, reducing the network performance greatly. Through the analysis on delay and packet loss rate in congestion, this paper proposes a congestion-aware mac protocol (C-MAC) for wireless sensor networks. In C-MAC, backoff delay of the nodes around contention area is adopted as a congestion indication. In normal state, the CSMA/CA is working well at sensor nodes. And when the congestion occurs, localized TDMA replaces the CSMA/CA in the congestion nodes. With the above mechanism, the congestion nodes only deliver their data during its assigned slots to control the contention overhead. Finally, we implement the C-MAC in our sensor network testbed. The experiment results show that the proposed MAC protocol could effectively operate on the congestion caused by burst information, and reduce both the delay and packet loss rate significantly.

In this paper, we compare two different types of asynchronous MAC protocols for wireless sensor networks (WSNs). The first based on low-power listening (LPL) which uses the transmission of the preamble frame such as (BMAC: Berkeley MAC and XMAC: A Short Preamble MAC) and the subsequent based on beaconing paradigm that uses the transmission of the beacon frame such as (RIMAC: Receiver Initiated MAC). Our experiments are based on the OMNeT++/MiXiM network simulator and implementation details are given in this paper where the energy saving performance is evaluated. The simulation results show that RIMAC saves more energy than XMAC and BMAC while the XMAC is graded second finest ahead of BMAC.

We propose a pseudo-random asynchronous duty cycle MAC protocol in wireless sensor networks. The proposed protocol adopts a hash function to determine the next wake-up times. As the next wake-up times are known in advance, the sensor nodes do not need to remain active until their intended receivers wake up. Given an end-to-end delay requirement, the proposed protocol significantly decreases energy consumption by reducing the idle listening time.

Wireless sensor networks are a promising application of the Internet of Things in the sustainable development of smart cities, and have been afforded significant attention since first being proposed. Authentication protocols aim to protect the security and confidentiality of legitimate users when accessing and transmitting data. However, existing protocols may suffer from one or more security flaws. Recently, Butt et al. proposed an energy-efficient three-factor authentication protocol for wireless sensor networks. However, their protocol is vulnerable to several attacks, and lacks certain security properties. In this paper, the causes of these design flaws are analyzed. Furthermore, we propose a novel three-factor authentication protocol (password, smart card, and biometric information) for wireless sensor networks in Internet of Things contexts. A dynamic anonymous strategy is designed to prevent privacy disclosure and to resist sensor node capture attacks, tracking attacks, and desynchronization attacks. The Find–Guess model and random oracle model are combined to prove the security of the proposed protocol. A comparative analysis with related schemes shows that the proposed protocol has higher security and is able to maintain a low computational overhead.

The efficient use of energy in wireless sensor networks is critical issue as the battery of a sensor node, in most cases, cannot be recharged or replaced after deployment. In order to detect an event, a sensor node spends most of the time in monitoring its environment, during which a significant amount of energy can be saved by placing the radio in the low power sleep mode when no reception and/or transmission of data is involved. In this paper, we discuss the design of a new MAC protocol for wireless sensor networks whose goal is to extend the lifetime of the network by avoiding major energy waste causes, such as collisions, overhearing and idle listening, without compromising other network performance measures such as network throughput. The performance of the protocol is studied by simulation and is compared to that of the well known S-MAC protocol which is designed to save energy and to the IEEE 802.11 protocol which is designed to maximize throughput.

In wireless sensor networks, MAC protocol is used to achieve efficient, fair and balanced allocation of wireless channel resources and access control of nodes in the network, and to control the communication process of nodes in the network. The energy consumption of wireless sensor nodes is mainly concentrated in the communication unit, including: data transceiver, idle listening, protocol control overhead, etc. A good MAC protocol is beneficial to reduce unnecessary energy consumption and enhance node life time. At the same time, MAC protocol, as the bottom protocol of wireless sensor network, provides a stable and reliable communication foundation for the realization of the upper protocol. Therefore, a large number of scholars at home and abroad have carried out extensive and in-depth research on MAC layer protocol of network. In this paper, the research process and progress of MAC layer protocol in wireless sensor networks are analyzed, and the research progress of MAC layer protocol in multi-radio frequency and multi-channel wireless sensor networks is analyzed.

Wireless sensor networks congestion occurs easily due to its centralized traffic pattern. Normally, mono-sync wireless sensor network experiences multiple traffic flow congestion in the dense environment of the network, which leads to excess energy consumption and severe packet loss. To overcome these issues, a congestion detection and alleviation mechanism using cluster based heuristic optimized hierarchical routing protocol is proposed in this paper. Here, congestion detection and alleviation utilize the features of sensor nodes. The congestion is categorized into two types: (i) node level congestion and (ii) link level congestion. The node level congestion is detected by assessing the buffer utilization and the interval amid the consecutive data packets. The link level congestion is considered with computing link usage utilizing back-off step of round robin carrier sense multi-access with collision avoidance. Congestion detection and alleviation reactively affected node/link through cuckoo hosted rider search multi-hop routing algorithm. It has two phases: the cluster head selection and multi-path routing. Cluster head selection is performed through Taylor multiple random forest kernel fuzzy C-means clustering algorithm and multi-path routing is performed through cuckoo hosted rider search multi-hop routing algorithm. The simulation of the proposed method is done in network simulator tool. Here, the performance metrics, like packet delivery ratio, delay, energy consumption, packet drop, overhead, network lifetime and throughput are calculated. The experimental outcomes of the proposed technique shows 11.6%, 18.4% and 28.1% lower delay, 78.2%, 65.4% and 52.6% higher packet delivery ratio, and 29.2%, 37.4% and 40.8% lower packet drop compared with the existing methods, like congestion detection and alleviation using multi-attribute decision-making in optimization-based hybrid congestion alleviation routing protocol in wireless sensor networks, congestion detection and alleviation using hybrid K-means with greedy best first search algorithms in packet rate reduction utilizing adaptive weight firefly algorithm ant colony optimization based routing protocol in wireless sensor networks and congestion detection and alleviation using multi-input time on task optimization algorithm for altered gravitational search algorithm routing protocol in wireless sensor networks.

FAMACROW: Fuzzy and ant colony optimization based combined mac, routing, and unequal clustering cross-layer protocol for wireless sensor networks

Sensor networks are one of the fastest growing areas in broad wireless ad hoc networking field. A sensor node, typically, contains signal-processing circuits, micro-controllers and a wireless transmitter/receiver antenna. Energy saving is one of the critical issue for sensor networks since most sensors are equipped with non-rechargeable batteries that have limited lifetime. Routing schemes are used to transfer data collected by sensor nodes to base stations. In the literature many routing protocols for wireless sensor networks are suggested. In this work, four routing protocols for wireless sensor networks viz. flooding, Gossiping, GBR and LEACH have been simulated using TinyOS and their power consumption is studied using PowerTOSSIM. A realization of these protocols has been carried out using Mica2 Motes.

Energy efficiency of the MAC protocol is a key design factor for wireless sensor networks (WSNs). Due to the importance of the problem, a number of energy efficient MAC protocols have been developed for WSNs. Preamble-sampling based MAC protocols (e.g., B-MAC and X-MAC) have overheads due to their preambles, and are inefficient at large wakeup intervals. SCP-MAC, a very energy efficient scheduling MAC protocol, minimizes the preamble by combining preamble sampling and scheduling techniques; however, it does not prevent energy loss due to overhearing; in addition, due to its synchronization procedure, it results in increased contention and delay. In this paper, we present an energy efficient MAC protocol for WSNs that avoids overhearing and reduces contention and delay by asynchronously scheduling the wakeup time of neighboring nodes. To validate our design and analysis, we implement the proposed scheme on the MicaZ platform. Experimental results show that AS-MAC considerably reduces energy consumption, packet loss and delay when compared with SCP-MAC.

An energy-balancing, cross-layer data gathering protocol (EB-CLDG) for wireless sensor networks (WSNs) is presented in this paper. EB-CLDG is proposed for monitoring and periodic reporting applications and the network is organized into concentric tiers around the sink. An energy-balancing clustering algorithm is employed to mitigate the “hot spot” problem. Thus the number of clusters closer to the sink node is bigger than those farther away from sink node, the inner cluster heads(CHs) can reduce the energy consumption within a cluster and preserve more energy for inter-cluster data relaying. In addition to, the MAC and routing of networks are integrated to minimize the protocol overhead. The scheme of synchronization within a cluster can not only synchronize sleep schedule to ensure data deliveries among neighbor nodes but also avoid energy waste for following and maintaining unnecessary schedules. And the scheme of invitation is employed to make collision-free within a cluster, which can reduce the density of contending nodes and the collisions of traffic being probably temporal correlation. Simulation results show that EB-CLDG leads to more uniform energy dissipation and prolongs the lifetime of network than S-MAC.

The optimized link state routing (OLSR) protocol is widely used in wireless ad hoc networks. With OLSR, only one routing path from source to destination is established at a time. However, links of wireless networks are very unreliable, and network topologies might vary rapidly. These features may cause frequent data retransmissions or the route rebuilding. Hence, improving the network throughput becomes a big challenge. This paper designs a new high-throughput routing protocol (HTRP) for wireless sensor networks, which combines the OLSR protocol with opportunistic routing and network coding. Opportunistic routing is able to leverage the wireless channel's characteristic of broadcasting and opportunistically deliver data through multiple routing paths. And OLSR can provide the information about network topologies and other parameters that opportunistic routing needs but cannot gain by itself. We evaluate the performance through both simulation and empirical experiments. The throughput of the HTRP is more than 10× and 2× of the OLSR protocol respectively in simulation and experiments.

In this paper a preamble sampling MAC protocol for low power wireless sensor networks is proposed. The article describes the implementation of the protocol using network nodes equipped with the Chipcon CC2420 802.15.4 transceiver. The power consumption of the transceiver has been measured and the MAC protocol has been adapted to the transceiver properties. The results show the trade-off between power consumption and transmission delay for this algorithm during the communication process.

Performance analysis of an adaptive, energy-efficient MAC protocol for wireless sensor networks

The problem of idle listening is one of the most significant sources of energy consumption in wireless sensor nodes. Many techniques have been proposed based on duty cycling to reduce this idle listening. This paper presents Adaptive Scheduling Predictive-Wakeup MAC (AS-PW-MAC), a new MAC protocol based on asynchronous duty cycling. AS-PW-MAC introduces RTE and RAS messages for pending data transmission. RTE and RAS are beneficial for varying traffic loads. We evaluate the performance of AS-PW-MAC through detailed ns-2 simulation and compare it to RI-MAC and PW-MAC, two well-known MAC protocols. Our evaluation includes clique, grid and random network scenarios. In all experiments, AS-PW-MAC significantly out performs RI-MAC and PW-MAC protocols. AS-PW-MAC achieves higher packet delivery ratio under a wide range of traffic loads compared to RI-MAC and PW-MAC. Especially, when there are contending flows, such as bursty traffic or transmissions from hidden nodes, AS-PW-MAC significantly improves the packet delivery ratio and delivery latency. The delivery latency for AS-PW-MAC is less than 21% compared to RI-MAC and PW-MAC. In all experiments, AS-PW-MAC maintained approximately 100% packet delivery ratio.