An Energy-Efficient MAC Protocol Exploiting the Tree Structure in Wireless Sensor Networks
Xiao Liang, Wei Li, Thomas Aaron Gulliver · 2007
Data aggregation combined with multiple-hopping forms a convergence communication paradigm, a tree structure, by which data flows from multiple source nodes to the sink in a sensor network. We propose a medium access control (MAC) protocol which takes advantage of this structure to schedule the send and receive times for all nodes within the network. As nodes only wake up when they send or receive, significant energy is saved by reducing idle listening, collisions and overhearing. Thel procedure from gathering information to scheduling is explicitly defined, and the performance is evaluated using the GloMoSim simulator.