An energy‐efficient, scalable and collision‐free MAC layer protocol for wireless sensor networks

Wide range of applications such as disaster management, military and security have fueled the interest in sensor networks during the past few years. Sensors are typically capable of wireless communication and are significantly constrained in the amount of available resources such as energy, storage and computation. Such constraints make the design and operation of sensor networks considerably different from contemporary wireless networks, and necessitate the development of resource conscious protocols and management techniques. In this paper, we present an energy‐efficient, scalable and collision‐free MAC layer protocol for sensor networks. The approach promotes time‐based arbitration of medium access to limit signal interference among the transmission of sensors. Transmission and reception time slots are prescheduled to allow sensors to turn their radio circuitry off when not engaged. In addition, energy consumption due to active to sleep mode transitions is minimized through the assignment of contiguous transmission/reception slots to each sensor. Scalability of the approach is supported through grouping of sensors into clusters. We describe an optimization algorithm for energy conscious scheduling of time slots that prevents intra‐cluster collisions and eliminates packet drop due to buffer size limitations. In addition, we also propose an arbitration scheme that prevents collisions among the transmission of sensors in different clusters. The impact of our approach on the network performance is qualified through simulation.. Copyright © 2004 John Wiley & Sons, Ltd.