Contention-free MAC protocols for asynchronous wireless sensor networks

A MAC protocol specifies how nodes in a sensor network access a shared communication channel. Desired properties of a MAC protocol are: it should be contention-free (avoid collisions); it should be distributed and self-stabilize to topological changes in the network; topological changes should be contained, namely, affect only the nodes in the vicinity of the change; it should not assume that nodes have a global time reference, that is, nodes may not be time-synchronized. We give a set of TDMAbased MAC protocols for asynchronous wireless sensor networks satisfying all of these requirements. The communication complexity, number and size of messages, for the protocols to stabilize is small, poly-logarithmic in the network size. Keywords MAC protocols

• Type: Journal
• Year: 2008
• Where: DC
• Authors: Costas Busch, Malik Magdon-Ismail, Fikret Sivrikaya, Bülent Yener
• Keywords: DC 2008, Internet Technology, MAC Protocols, Sensor Networks, Topological Changes