Medium access control issues in sensor networks

Medium access control for wireless sensor networks has been a very active research area for the past couple of years. The sensor networks literature presents an alphabet soup of medium access control protocols with almost all of the works focusing only on energy efficiency. There is much more innovative work to be done at the MAC layer, but current efforts are not addressing the hard unsolved problems. Majority of the works appearing in the literature are "least publishable incremental improvements" over the popular S-MAC [1] protocol. In this paper we present research directions for future medium access research. We identify some open issues and discuss possible solutions. Categories and Subject Descriptors C.2.1 [Network Architecture and Design]: Wireless communication; C.2.6 [Internetworking]: Standards; I.6.5 [Model Development]: Modeling methodologies General Terms Design, Experimentation, Standardization Keywords Wireless Sensor Networks, Medium Access Control

• Type: Journal
• Year: 2006
• Where: CCR
• Authors: Muneeb Ali, Umar Saif, Adam Dunkels, Thiemo Voigt, Kay Römer, Koen Langendoen, Joseph Polastre, Zartash Afzal Uzmi
• Keywords: Access Control Protocols, CCR 2006, Medium Access Control, Wireless Sensor Networks