Reducing energy consumption by cross layer design in wireless sensor networks

Wireless Sensor Networks (WSN) is a field which has gained much importance in the past decade. WSN contain sensor nodes which are battery powered and hence reducing energy consumption is the most challenging issue in such systems. One important method to reduce energy consumption in WSN is to do cross layer optimization. This paper gives a PHY-MAC cross layer design which reduces the energy consumption of the system. Information from physical layer adaptively changes the sleep time of the nodes. Here Sensor-MAC (S-MAC) protocol is used which uses sleep-wake cycles to improve the performance of the system. Simulations were done in NS2 and the proposed cross layer design shows a marked reduction in energy consumption of the system.