A practical design of multi-channel MAC for cluster-tree WSN

Multi-channel media access control (MAC) now has been well understood in wireless sensor network (WSN) with the development of sensor device which is equipped with a single half-duplex transceiver with multiple-frequency support. However, peer-to-peer WSN causes much attention by researchers, while it is not suitable for lots of practical applications. In this paper, a new design of multi-channel MAC special for cluster-tree WSN, a typical asymmetric network, is introduced. Cluster-tree WSN has many special features in nodes distribution and data direction. According to these features, phase hopping (control channel and data channel coexist) is used to achieve multi-channel assignment and channel switch and time division multiple address (TDMA) mechanism is utilized to avoid data collision in the period of nodes' communication. The simulation results show that the scheme presented has advantages in providing higher maximum effective data transmission and smaller average packet delay and reducing energy consumption.