An invitation transmission based MAC protocol for wireless sensor network

In this paper we present an invitation transmission based MAC protocol (I-MAC) for wireless sensor network. I-MAC adopts an invitation mechanism based on synchronized schedule to improve the utilization of medium thereby reducing the latency. Firstly I-MAC defines a child nodes-parent node pairs which has only one father node (f-node) and several son nodes (s-node). An invitation table is maintained in f-node. F-node fills the necessary information of invitation in the invitation-control packet so that each s-node knows who will be invited in next step. Secondly in I-MAC, f-node can invite multiple s-nodes to transmit their packets in SLEEP period. Therefore packets can be transmitted to sink faster than traditional MAC protocols. In other words, I-MAC reduces the latency of each hop. Our simulation results in ns-2 show that I-MAC achieves significant improvement in terms of end-to-end delivery delay. Furthermore, our simulation results shows I-MAC also increases network throughput without sacrificing energy efficiency.