An Efficient Transmission Power Control Algorithm in Wireless Sensor Networks

In wireless sensor networks (WSNs), sensor nodes are typically battery powered and energy consumption is critical. In this paper we present an efficient transmission power control algorithm based on the RTS/CTS mechanism in SMAC. The main contribution of our work is to introduce a low-cost power controlled transmission of RTS, CTS, DATA, and ACK frames while preserving the collision and overhearing avoidance properties of SMAC protocol. Our proposed algorithm is simulated and the simulation result shows that our algorithm can reduce the energy consumption by 40% - 60% comparing to the conventional SMAC protocol, and outperform the LMA (local mean algorithm) by 20% - 30%.