An asynchronous MAC protocol for wireless sensor networks

The MAC protocol for wireless sensor network plays a very important role in the control of energy consumption. It is a very important issue to effectively utilize power under the condition of limited energy. The most energy-wasting part of the MAC protocol for wireless sensor network is at the idling condition. Therefore it is crucial for power saving to be able to turn off the signal transducer of the wireless network when the equipment is idling. Pattern-MAC (PMAC) allows sensors that did not transfer for a long period of time to quickly enter a dormant state, so that the problem of sensor overhearing can be greatly improved, and the whole network structure can fully respond to the actual transfer rate without too much energy consumption, but this type of design requires precise time synchronization mechanism. Achieving time synchronization is a very energy consuming and very expensive mechanism in the sensor network structure, achieving the goal is coupled with excess energy consumption and reduction of the lifespan of the sensor. Additionally, the exchange action with the neighboring pattern after each cycle, not only generates additional energy consumption for data transfer, but is also accompanied by factors such as competition, collision and pattern exchange failure. We propose an asynchronous MAC protocol (AMAC) in this paper and expect to improve the problem of energy wasting and time synchronization due to sleeping schedule exchange under the PMAC basic protocol. (C) 2007 Elsevier Ltd. All rights reserved.