Energy-Efficient MAC Protocol for Wireless Sensor Networks - A Review

Energy efficiency is the kernel issue in the designing of wireless sensor network(WSN) MAC protocols. Energy efficiency is a major consideration while designing wireless sensor network nodes. Most sensor network applications require energy autonomy for the complete lifetime of the node, which may span up to several years. These energy constraints require that the system be built such that Wireless sensor networks use battery-operated computing and sensing devices. A network of these devices will collaborate for a common application such as environmental monitoring. Each component consumes minimum possible power, ensure the average successful transmission rate, decrease the data packet average waiting time, and reduce the average energy consumption. Influencing by the design principles of traditional layered protocol stack, current MAC protocol designing for wireless sensor networks (WSN) seldom takes load balance into consideration, which greatly restricts WSN lifetime. As a novel Forwarding Election-based MAC protocol, is presented to prolong WSN lifetime by means of improving energy efficiency and enhancing load balance.