Efficient MAC Protocols for

Wireless Sensor Networks

Mahendra Kumar

Properties of a Well
Defined MAC Protocol

Energy Efficient
Scalability
Adaptability to changes in network
topology
Latency, throughput, bandwidth
Fairness not so important

Reason of Energy Waste

Collision
Overhearing
Control Packet overhead
Idle Listening
Overremitting

Existing MAC Protocols

Sensor-MAC (S-MAC) : Listen-sleep

Timeout-MAC (T-MAC) : Activation event

WiseMAC : Preamble Sampling

S-MAC

Main goal reduce power consumption

Three major components:

Periodic sleep-listen

Collision and overhearing avoidance

Message passing

Periodic Sleep-Listen

Each node goes to sleep for some time,

and then wakes up and listens to see if
any other node wants to talk to it.

During Sleep it turn off its radio.

Collision and Overhearing

Avoidance

Interfering nodes go to sleep after they hear

an RTS or CTS packet.

Duration field in each transmitted packet

indicates how long the remaining transmission
will be.

S-MAC

Maintaining
Synchronization

The listen/sleep scheme requires

synchronization among neighboring nodes.

Updating schedules is accomplished by

sending a SYNC packet.

Advantages/Disadvantage
s

Energy waste caused by idle listening is

reduced by sleep schedules.

Sleep and listen periods are predefined and

constant which decreases the efficiency of the
algorithm under variable traffic load.

Timeout-MAC (T-MAC)

Proposed to enhance the poor results of S-MAC protocol

under variable traffic load.

Listen period ends when no activation event has

occurred for a time threshold TA.

Reduce idle listening by transmitting all messages in

bursts of variable length, and sleeping between bursts.

times out on hearing nothing.

S-MAC Vs T-MAC

Advantages/Disadvantage
s

Gives better result under variable load.

Suffers from early sleeping problem node

goes to sleep when a neighbor still has
messages for it.

WiseMAC

All nodes defined to have two communication

channels.

Data channel uses TDMA

Control channel uses CSMA

Preamble sampling used to decrease idle

listening time.
Nodes sample the medium periodically to see if
any data is going to arrive.

WiseMAC

Advantages/Disadvantage
s

Dynamic preamble length adjustment results

in better performance.

Conflict when one node starts to send the

preamble to a node that is already receiving
another nodes transmission where the
preamble sender is not within range. Hidden
terminal problem

Other MAC Protocols

SIFT :Event Driven

TRAMA : Traffic Adaptive MAC,
TDMA Based

MAC
Protocol

Time Sync
Needed

Type

Adaptivity to
Changes

Advantages

Disadvantages

S-MAC

No

CSMA,
Contention
-based

Good

Energy waste caused by

idle listening is reduced by
sleep schedules.
Simplicity.

Sleep and listen periods are

predefined and constant, which
decreases the efficiency of the
algorithm under variable traffic
load.

T-MAC

No

CSMA,
Contention
based

Good

Gives better results under

variable loads

Early sleeping problem.

WiseMAC

No

CSMA,
Preamble based

Good

Dynamic preamble length

adjustment results in better
performance under
variable traffic conditions.

Decentralized sleep-listen
scheduling results in different
sleep and wake-up times for
each neighbor of a node. Hidden
terminal problem

TRAMA

Yes

TDMA/CSMA

Good

Higher percentage of sleep

time and less collision
probability is achieved
compared to CSMA based
protocols.

Without considering the

transmissions and receptions, the
duty cycle is at least 12.5 %,
which is a considerably high
value.

SIFT

No

CSMA/CA,
Contention
Window-based

Good

Very low latency is

achieved with many traffic
sources.

Increased idle listening caused

by listening to all slots before
sending. System-wide time
synchronization is needed for
slotted contention windows.