MMSN: Multi-Frequency Media Access Control for Wireless Sensor Networks

— Multi-frequency media access control has been well understood in general wireless ad hoc networks, while in wireless sensor networks, researchers still focus on single frequency solutions. In wireless sensor networks, hardware devices are equipped with very limited communication ability and applications adopt much smaller packet sizes compared to those in general wireless ad hoc networks. Hence, the multi-frequency MAC protocols proposed for general wireless ad hoc networks are not suitable for wireless sensor network applications, which we further demonstrate through our simulation experiments. In this paper, we propose MMSN, the first multi-frequency MAC protocol for wireless sensor networks. In the MMSN protocol, four frequency assignment options are provided to meet different application requirements. A scalable media access is designed with efficient broadcast support. Also, an optimal non-uniform backoff algorithm is derived and its lightweight approximation is implemented ...

• Type: Conference
• Year: 2006
• Where: INFOCOM
• Authors: Gang Zhou, Chengdu Huang, Ting Yan, Tian He, John A. Stankovic, Tarek F. Abdelzaher
• Keywords: Communications, General Wireless Ad, INFOCOM 2006, Wireless Ad Hoc Networks, Wireless Sensor Networks