A Contention-Based MAC for Wireless Sensor Networks Including a Mobile Node

Wireless sensor networks with many inexpensive sensor nodes allow users to accurately monitor a remote environment. Usually one or several mobile nodes are used to collect and combine sensor data from each individual stationary node. These networks require robust wireless communication protocols that are energy efficient and provide low latency. Motivated by these applications, we develop a novel medium access control (MAC) protocol for this kind of applications. The sensor nodes are expected to remain inactive for most of time, but become active when a mobile node is nearby. A few techniques for energy saving are developed in our protocol, e.g., true-sleep and pseudo-sleep modes are introduced to reduce energy consumption. They are implemented by radio-triggered circuit which wakes up the stationary nodes as a mobile node moves into the stationary nodes' reception range. The proposed protocol is simulated in OPNET Modeler 10.5. The simulation results show that the proposed protocol has better performance than S-MAC and EAR (Eavesdrop-And-Register) in terms of latency, energy efficiency, and throughput