A²-MAC: an application adaptive medium access control protocol for data collections in wireless sensor networks

In recent years, wireless sensor networks have been accepted/deployed for applications ranging from environmental monitoring, wild life management, to water resource management. Networking protocols for wireless sensor networks have attracted a lot of attention both from research communities and industries. At the same time, much of the existing research work of MAC (Medium Access Control) protocols for wireless sensor networks is focused on the energy efficiency and self-organizing features. How to design a MAC protocol that is capable of adapting to applications still remains as one of the main challenges of wireless sensor network technologies. In this paper, we present a MAC protocol, called A -MAC, for data collection in wireless sensor networks. The main strength of A²-MAC is that it uses the application sensing interval as the control hint for medium access. Performance analytical results showed that A²-MAC is able to achieve high throughput up to around 90% of the channel capacity as well as high energy savings up to 90%.