An adaptive energy-efficient and low-delay MAC protocol for wireless sensor networks

To increase the life of the sensor networks, each sensor node has to conserve energy. Due to the fact that each sensor node has one battery energy to remain alive for long times, energy management is a one of critical issues in wireless sensor networks. In this paper we propose a power efficient and low-delay MAC protocol (MT-MAC, Modified T-MAC) for wireless sensor networks. We first address the protocol design problem and suggest a novel solution based on media access control protocol. The MT-MAC uses network traffics to determine active and sleep periods to save energy and enhances the packet transmission latency. The MT-MAC shows better energy saving than the previous proposed protocols, S-MAC and T-MAC.