A review on energy efficient MAC protocols for wireless LANs

Energy efficiency is a major issue in any wireless networks. Medium access control (MAC) protocols play an important role in providing a fair and efficient allocation of the available bandwidth. Although a lot of research has been conducted on MAC protocols, the various issues involved have mostly been presented in isolation to each other. In this paper, we present a comprehensive review of energy efficiency MAC protocols for wireless LANs, integrating the issues and the challenges. We also present a classification of MAC protocols, based on the energy-efficiency, and describe them briefly.