Low Power Medium Access Control Protocol Design for Wireless Sensor Networks
- Members: Kunyoung Lee, Paul Mitchell
- Start Date: October 2008
Wireless sensor networks are a novel form of communication network.
For organization of these WSNs, each individual nodes are deployed
randomly to a specific extent of areas based on application. These
sensor nodes form a network automatically without outside intervention
and send the information obtained by monitoring physical conditions to
a server through an external formed network. This helps users collect
necessary information easily by building extensive networks in even
inaccessible areas. These WSNs are used in a variety of applications
including home, industry, environment control and so on. Nowadays, the
demand for these WSNs is increasing more and more.
The most important factor involving in WSNs is ultra low power
consumption. In general, it is difficult and infeasible to replace
each battery of nodes separately because the number of nodes is very
large and also nodes are spread through remote and large
regions. Therefore the aim of this research is focused upon an energy
efficient medium access control (MAC) protocol for long life time of
sensor nodes.
Our research focuses on the development of a low power and complexity
MAC protocol based on the IEEE 802.15.4 wireless medium access control
(MAC) and physical layer (PHY) specifications for low-rate wireless
personal area networks (LR-WPANs). The existing MAC protocols still
have problems of consuming a high power in communication algorithms,
operation scheme and processing technique. Our research achieves the
more energy efficient performance of MAC protocol in terms of removing
unnecessary execution and optimizing transmission algorithm. For
theoretical simulation, OPNET modeller is used and for practical
experiment, IRIS Mote platform is used.
Key Objectives
To develop low power and complexity MAC protocol using optimized communication algorithm, adaptive operation scheme and refined processing technique.
To prove better performance through comparison of power consumption between existing MAC protocols and proposed MAC protocol