Asymmetric Links MAC Protocol for Low-Duty-Cycled Wireless Sensor Networks
Zhen Xu, Lei Li-hong, Song Hua-hua, Xia Jing-shan · Communications technology · 2016
Low-duty-cycle wireless sensor networks can prolong life time of the node in the network, but also brings some extra problems, such as long waiting delay. Recently-proposed low duty-cycled receiver-initiated MAC protocols could well realize the purpose of energy saving, and however, these protocols would perform poorly when highly asymmetric links occur. A hybrid MAC protocol called AL-MAC and incorporating the advantages of both receiver-initiated and sender- initiated MAC protocols is proposed. The protocol would switch to sender-initiated MAC protocols when receiver-initiated MAC protocols perform poorly due to asymmetric links. Experimental results indicate that the proposed AL-MAC protocol could fairly increase packet reception ratio and reduce packet transmission delay as compared with A-MAC protocol.