An Improved Adaptive MAC Protocol for Wireless Sensor Networks Based on Cross-layer Architecture

In this paper, we propose an improved adaptive MAC protocol for wireless sensor networks based on cross-layer architecture. The new protocol is inspired by SMAC, probably the most well-known sensor MAC scheme for energy efficiency. In the proposed new protocol, two major changes are made in original SMAC protocol, one is continual data transmission, and the other is graded contention window. The new MAC protocol is designed based on cross-layer architecture, so that nodes can switch their transmission mode adaptively according to the interface queue length. Simulations have been done to evaluate the performance of the proposed new protocol, by which we can find out that the new protocol can really reduce packet end-to-end delay and energy consumption in case of heavy traffic compared with SMAC.