Load-aware energy-efficient medium access control for Wireless Sensor Networks

In Wireless Sensor Networks (WSNs), sensors are usually battery-powered. Therefore, it is essential to reduce energy consumption to prolong network lifetime. In this paper, we propose a Load-aware Energy-efficient MAC protocol (LE-MAC) which utilises fuzzy control and the quorum concept. The LE-MAC protocol utilises fuzzy control to dynamically adjust the active/sleep ratio of each sensor node. The quorum concept is adopted to guarantee that two nodes with different active/sleep ratios can meet and communicate with each other. Simulation results verify that our LE-MAC can adapt to various network traffic loads. Furthermore, LE-MAC achieves significant performance improvements in energy consumption, transmission successful ratio, and transmission delay.