A Cross-Layer Protocol for Event-Driven Wireless Sensor Networks

This paper presents a cross-layer Event-Driven Sensor MAC protocol (ED-SMAC) for event-driven WSNs. ED-SMAC defines two network statuses: regular status and event status. On regular status, sensor nodes only send little normal detection information to sink, so the basic techniques in SMAC protocol are adopted to reduce the energy waste and guarantee the data transmissions. On event status, a new cross-layer event-based cluster formation algorithm is proposed. Several sensor nodes which have been detected a specific event in the network form a cluster and elect a cluster head. The event information is collected, aggregated and transferred to sink by their elected head. Simulations results show that the proposed protocol improves event detection reliability, shortens the average packets latency, and saves node energy.