LMAC: An Energy-Latency Trade-off MAC Protocol for Wireless Sensor Networks

This paper proposes LMAC (Latency MAC) protocol for wireless sensor networks. We investigate the idle listening problem and try to avoid it by sacrificing latency. We examine the latency constraint in wireless sensor networks and study the tradeoff between extra latency and energy-efficiency. In the process of trading latency for energy-efficiency, there are many restrictions. Thus, we study and analyze these limitations and then try to achieve the best tradeoff between latency and energy-efficiency under these limitations. By increasing the arrival prediction accuracy of data packets, the simulation results show that LMAC indeed consumes less energy, especially under a loose latency constraint or a light traffic load in wireless sensor network environments.