Classic Efficient-Energy MAC Protocols for Wireless Sensor Networks

Wireless sensor networks (WSN) are considered the sensing technology of the future. A major problem for many sensor network applications is determining the most efficient way of conserving the energy of the power source. Thus Medium Access Control (MAC) is introduced to solve the problem. In this paper we give an analysis of some characters of WSN and give a short introduction of some recent typical MAC protocols concerning with energy efficiency for WSN. According to channel access policies, these protocols are classified into four types, which are contention-based, TDMA-based, hybrid, and cross layer protocols, and give a short introduction about each of them.