An Enhanced Cross-layer MAC Design for Energy efficiency in Wireless Sensor Networks

In wireless sensor networks, the main research objective is the development of algorithms and protocols ensuring minimal energy consumption. Most proposed solutions are based on one-layer stack model approach. In this paper, we propose an energy efficient MAC protocol that applies routing and MAC layers jointly. In this new approach, the interactions between MAC and Routing layers are fully exploited to achieve energy efficiency for wireless sensor networks. In the proposed MAC protocol, we solve the forced wake-up problem in the adaptive S-MAC to reduce energy consumption of the nodes, by exploiting routing information to wake-up only nodes belonging to a routing path. Simulation results show that the proposed CL-MAC protocol significantly improves energy efficient compared to the adaptive S-MAC.