MMAC: a mobility-adaptive, collision-free MAC protocol for wireless sensor networks

Mobility in wireless sensor networks poses unique challenges to the medium access control (MAC) protocol design. Previous MAC protocols for sensor networks assume static sensor nodes and focus on energy-efficiency. In this paper, we present a mobility-adaptive, collision-free medium access control protocol (MMAC) for mobile sensor networks. MMAC caters for both weak mobility (e.g., topology changes, node joins, and node failures) and strong mobility (e.g., concurrent node joins and failures, and physical mobility of nodes). MMAC is a scheduling-based protocol and thus it guarantees collision avoidance. MMAC allows nodes the transmission rights at particular time-slots based on the traffic information and mobility pattern of the nodes. Simulation results indicate that the performance of MMAC is equivalent to that of TRAMA in static sensor network environments. In sensor networks with mobile nodes or high network dynamics, MMAC outperforms existing MAC protocols, like TRAM A and S-MAC, in terms of energy-efficiency, delay, and packet delivery.