AS-MAC: An Asynchronous Scheduled MAC Protocol for Wireless Sensor Networks

Energy efficiency of the MAC protocol is a key design factor for wireless sensor networks (WSNs). Due to the importance of the problem, a number of energy efficient MAC protocols have been developed for WSNs. Preamble-sampling based MAC protocols (e.g., B-MAC and X-MAC) have overheads due to their preambles, and are inefficient at large wakeup intervals. SCP-MAC, a very energy efficient scheduling MAC protocol, minimizes the preamble by combining preamble sampling and scheduling techniques; however, it does not prevent energy loss due to overhearing; in addition, due to its synchronization procedure, it results in increased contention and delay. In this paper, we present an energy efficient MAC protocol for WSNs that avoids overhearing and reduces contention and delay by asynchronously scheduling the wakeup time of neighboring nodes. To validate our design and analysis, we implement the proposed scheme on the MicaZ platform. Experimental results show that AS-MAC considerably reduces energy consumption, packet loss and delay when compared with SCP-MAC.