AS2-MAC: An Energy-efficient MAC Protocol for Wireless Sensor Networks
Luca Anchora, Antonio Capone, Luca Mainetti, Vincenzo Mighali, Luigi Patrono and Francesco Simone
Wireless Sensor Networks have been receiving an ever increasing attention from the scientific and industrial communities because they are one of the enabling technologies for to the so called Internet of Things. Nodes in a WSN have limited battery duration, thus energy must be used carefully. Since the radio transceiver is one of the most energy consuming components, an optimization of the communication phase is necessary. In this work, a new duty cycle-based MAC protocol, compatible with the IEEE 802.15.4 standard, is presented and validated: AS2-MAC. By knowing in advance the wake up periods of its neighbours, each node switches the radio on only when it wants to transmit or knows that a neighbour has something to send. The effectiveness of this mechanism is validated through a proper simulation campaign carried out with the Omnet++ simulation tool.
Keywords: Energy saving, duty cycle, MAC scheduler, OMNeT++, performance evaluation, wireless sensor networks.