Accessibility statement

Low Power Medium Access Control Protocol Design for Wireless Sensor Networks

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

Members

  • Kunyoung Lee
  • Paul Mitchell

Dates

  • October 2008 to
    July 2012

Research