Energy-efficient Smartphone-based Data Collection from Wireless Sensor Networks

We develop the Periodic Listening Medium Access Control protocol (PLMAC) to improve energy-efficiency for smartphone-based data collection applications. PLMAC decreases the idle listening period of network nodes with a duty cycling schedule based on neighbor node visits. In a smartphone-based data collection application, network nodes run mostly in the idle listening operation for detecting a smartphone visit. The duty cycling mechanism of PLMAC allows nodes to sleep most of the time with a sleep/listen schedule. When a node is visited by a smartphone user, its neighbor nodes adjust their listening period to be long enough to communicate with an approaching smartphone. By analyzing a mobility dataset, we validate the need for a duty cycling schedule based on neighbor node visits. PLMAC runs in collaboration with the B-MAC protocol. We found that PLMAC's duty cycling mechanism results in better energy-efficiency than B-MAC.