Nomenclature of Medium Access Control Protocol over Wireless Sensor Networks

Wireless sensor networks (WSNs) are considered as the appealing research area. WSNs require highly robust medium access control (MAC) protocol to enhance the performance in several application areas, such as intrusion detection, target detection, industrial automation, environmental monitoring, surveillance system, medical diagnosing system, and tactical system. On the other hand, there are several factors that affect the performance of these applications particularly selection of weak MAC protocol. In this paper, we provide performance impairing drivers for MAC protocols, which affect the efficiency and robustness of MAC protocols in WSN applications. We classify MAC protocols into six categories, as compared with previous MAC surveys that only focused on classifying the MAC protocols into two, three, or four major categories. In addition, we show the link of each category with another based on their existing features. Furthermore, this survey provides a detailed nomenclature in which protocols are categorized based on synchronous and asynchronous communication. This survey also discusses the possible threats and some existing solutions at the MAC layer from 2000 to 2014. Finally, we identify the future research challenges and raise directions for controlling these challenges.