Indian Journal of Science and Technology

Abstract

MCSMAC refers to a protocol which is aimed to control multi-channel medium access in wireless sensor networks (WSNs). In this paper, we report a study in which we attempted to optimize the MCSMAC protocol. This protocol was designed on the basis of the S-MAC protocol and is considered to be a kind of contention-based protocol. Any MAC protocol which is designed for sensor networks should take the specific circumstances and constraints of such networks into account; some of the important constraints and features of them are limited resources, high density and traffic among sensor nodes and unstable state of network nodes. Wireless communications among sensors consume the majority of the energy in a network. The primary purpose of our optimization study on the MCSMAC protocol was to reduce the energy consumption and the delay time while transferring data packets. The results obtained from the simulations carried out in this study verify and acknowledge the mentioned improvements in the MCSMAC. This protocol operates efficiently in highly dense and dynamic networks. The energy consumption and delay time of this protocol were meticulously examined under different topologies and traffic loads. Based on the conducted investigations, some equations were proposed for choosing the appropriate parameters for different functions.

Keywords: Wireless Sensor Networks (WSNs), Medium Access Control (MAC), Energy, Delay