MAC Protocol Engine for Sensor Networks

—We present a novel approach for Medium Access Control (MAC) protocol design based on protocol engine. Current way of designing MAC protocols for a specific application is based on two steps: First the application specifications (such as network topology and packet generation rate), the requirements for energy consumption, delay and reliability, and the resource constraints from the underlying physical layer (such as energy consumption and data rate) are specified, and then the protocol that satisfies all these constraints is designed. Main drawback of this procedure is that we have to restart the design process for each possible application, which may be a waste of time and efforts. The goal of a MAC protocol engine is to provide a library of protocols together with their analysis such that for each new application the optimal protocol is chosen automatically among its library with optimal parameters. We illustrate the MAC engine idea by including an original analysis of IEEE 80...

• Type: Conference
• Year: 2009
• Where: GLOBECOM
• Authors: Sinem Coleri Ergen, Piergiuseppe Di Marco, Carlo Fischione
• Keywords: GLOBECOM 2009, MAC Protocol, Optimal Protocol, Protocol Engine, Telecommunications