Customized Duty Cycling with MacZ

With the trend towards wireless sensor networks, battery-powered devices become more and more common. To enhance node and sometimes even system lifetime, intelligent protocols must be designed that offer mechanisms for energy savings. This paper proposes a new duty cycling protocol that is part of our quality of service MAC protocol MacZ. The duty cycling protocol follows a cross-layer approach using application knowledge to optimize energy consumption. We present the concept of our approach, show its application in the "Assisted Bicycle Trainer" scenario and compare its efficiency with the well-known S-MAC duty cycling protocol.