1-hopMAC: An Energy-Efficient MAC Protocol for Avoiding 1 -hop Neighborhood Knowledge

Abstract

Wireless sensor networks (WSNs) have witnessed a tremendous upsurge in recent years, both in academia and industry; this is mainly attributed to their unprecedented operating conditions and a variety of commercially viable applications. Because of their dependence on scarce battery power, communication protocols need to be energy efficient. However, finding the optimal solution is challenging as it needs to consider the whole communication stack at once. In this paper, we propose an approach that aims at optimizing jointly L2 (link) and L3 (routing) protocols. We design 1-hopMAC, a communication architecture grouping MAC and routing layers which avoids 1-hop neighborhood knowledge. 1-hopMAC can be combined, among others, with a geographic or gradient based routing protocols. We present an analytical study of energy consumption to point out the optimal configuration of 1-hopMAC