Improving Energy Efficiency Using MR-MAC Protocol in Wireless Sensor Networks

Sensor networks are network of nodes working towards a common application such as temperature or light measurement in a field. These sensor nodes are characterized by limited energy resources. Energy in a sensor node is consumed in sensing, data transferring by the microcontroller and communication. For communication, energy is consumed in transmitting and receiving packets. In layered based architecture of WSN, Unified Network Protocol Framework (UNPF) plays an important role for establishing hop by hop network connection. To implement layered based WSN using UNPF, three modules are incorporated: Initialization and maintenance, MAC Protocol and Routing Protocol. The existing protocols like CSMA, SMAC and TRAMA protocols are analysed with various parameters such as average packet delivery rate, average packet delay, energy efficiency with variable traffic and increasing load. A novel protocol called MR-MAC, an energy conserving Medium Access Control (MAC) protocol for WSN is introduced, the core of which is characterized by both random based and scheduling based of sleep-wake up cycle. The nodes in the network do not need to wake up all the times. The node is active only when the data transfer arrives at the scheduled time and also it extends and limits the time according to the data rate using random access. Only the nodes that are going to receive a packet are listening and the rest of the nodes sleep during that period and hence conserve energy. Our simulation results propose that MR-MAC performs well in various topologies with significant energy savings