Design and evaluation of a versatile and efficient receiver-initiated link layer for low-power wireless

We present A-MAC, a receiver-initiated link layer for low-power wireless networks that supports several services under a unified architecture, and does so more efficiently and scalably than prior approaches. A-MAC's versatility stems from layering unicast, broadcast, wakeup, pollcast, and discovery above a single, flexible synchronization primitive. AMAC's efficiency stems from optimizing this primitive and with it the most consequential decision that a low-power link makes: whether to stay awake or go to sleep after probing the channel. Today's receiver-initiated protocols require more time and energy to make this decision, and they exhibit worse judgment as well, leading to many false positives and negatives, and lower packet delivery ratios. A-MAC begins to make this decision quickly, and decides more conclusively and correctly in both the negative and affirmative. A-MAC's scalability comes from reserving one channel for the initial handshake and different chann...

• Type: Journal
• Year: 2010
• Where: SENSYS
• Authors: Prabal Dutta, Stephen Dawson-Haggerty, Yin Chen, Chieh-Jan Mike Liang, Andreas Terzis
• Keywords: Low-power Wireless Networks, Packet Delivery Ratios, Receiver-initiated Link Layer, Sensor Networks, SENSYS 2010