Medium access control with a dynamic duty cycle for sensor networks

• Published in: 2004 IEEE Wireless Communications and Networking Conference Vol. 3; pp. 1534 - 1539 Vol.3
• Main Authors: Lin, P., Qiao, C., Wang, X.
• Format: Conference Proceeding
• Language: English
• Published: Piscataway NJ IEEE 2004
• Subjects: Access methods and protocols, osi model; Access protocols; Applied sciences; Clocks; Communication system traffic control; Delay; Energy conservation; Energy consumption; Exact sciences and technology; Media Access Protocol; Synchronization; Systems, networks and services of telecommunications; Telecommunications; Telecommunications and information theory; Teleprocessing networks. Isdn; Teletraffic; Wireless application protocol; Wireless sensor networks; Access control; Performance evaluation; Power consumption; Simulation; Energy conservation; Analytical method; Teletraffic; Access protocol; Sensor array
• ISBN: 9780780383449; 0780383443
• ISSN: 1525-3511
• DOI: 10.1109/WCNC.2004.1311671

Energy conservation is a primary concern in sensor networks. Several MAC protocols have been proposed to address this concern. However, the tradeoff between power consumption and latency has not been thoroughly studied. In this paper, we propose a sensor medium access control protocol with dynamic duty cycle, DSMAC, which achieves a good tradeoff between the two performance metrics without incurring much overhead. Moreover, DSMAC is able to adjust its duty cycle with varying traffic conditions without assuming any prior knowledge of application requirements. Both analytical and simulation results have been presented in this paper.