TDMA Based Low Energy Consuming MAC Protocol for Wireless Sensor Networks in Environmental Monitoring Applications

Environmental monitoring applications need tiny sensor nodes randomly embedded in the target area. As the wireless Sensor Networks are made up of tiny energy hungry sensor nodes, it is a challenging process to retain the energy level of those nodes for a long period. They are equipped with limited computing and radio communication capabilities. This work is on the attempt to reduce the power consumption of nodes, by concentrating on the radio, which has four states of operations at various time intervals. A proper sleep/wake up scheduling, when applied over these radios, can reduce the overall energy consumption of the Wireless Sensor Network minimally. The scheduling protocol used in this work is a TDMA based MAC protocol. When implemented in a simulated WSN, it reduces the energy consumption of the previously existing protocol and hence it proves to be efficient, when compared with other scheduling protocols.