MAC protocols for wireless sensor networks: a survey

By I. Demirkol, Cem Ersoy, Fatih Alagöz. IEEE Communications Magazine, 2006

1,368 citations recorded by the source corpus.

Wireless sensor networks are appealing to researchers due to their wide range of application potential in areas such as target detection and tracking, environmental monitoring, industrial process monitoring, and tactical systems. However, low sensing ranges result in dense networks and thus it becomes necessary to achieve an efficient medium-access protocol subject to power constraints. Various medium-access control (MAC) protocols with different objectives have been proposed for wireless sensor networks. In this article, we first outline the sensor network properties that are crucial for the design of MAC layer protocols. Then, we describe several MAC protocols proposed for sensor networks, emphasizing their strengths and weaknesses. Finally, we point out open research issues with regard to MAC layer design.

Subfields: Computer Networks and Communications, Electrical and Electronic Engineering

View Paper: https://www.semanticscholar.org/paper/3a9314f44527167590840a5cf64ca7bb4d2b0e83

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In Computer Networks and Communications

In Electrical and Electronic Engineering

Citations in the corpus

MAC Essentials for Wireless Sensor Networks (2010, positive): “Previous milestone surveys [103], [104], and [105] have focused on classifying MAC protocols according to traditional MAC techniques used.”
The Evolution of MAC Protocols in Wireless Sensor Networks: A Survey (2013, background): “Later, the work in [4] analyzes advantages and disadvantages of some recently proposed WSN MAC protocols.”
On coverage issues in directional sensor networks: A survey (2011, background): “Energy-aware MAC-layers and routing protocols [24–26], cross-layer design [27], various deployment strategies [28], base-station positioning algorithms [29–32] have been proposed to minimize the energy consumption of regular WSN activities.”
Internet of Things (IoT): A vision, architectural elements, and future directions (2012, background): “SeveralMAC protocols have been proposed for various domains with TDMA (collision free), CSMA (low traffic efficiency) and FDMA (collision free but requires additional circuitry in nodes) schemes available to the user [59].”
An Industrial Perspective on Wireless Sensor Networks — A Survey of Requirements, Protocols, and Challenges (2014, background): “There are other surveys which focus on specific layers or functions like Medium Access Control(MAC) [21], [22], [23], [24], routing [18], [25], [26], and transport functions [19], [27].”
Low Power Wide Area Networks: An Overview (2016, background): “2) Duty Cycling: Low power operation is achieved by opportunistically turning off power hungry components of M2M/IoT devices [22], [23], e.”
Wireless sensor networks for healthcare: A survey (2010, neutral): “Besides regular MAC layer challenges of WSN like energy efficiency [109], there are challenging problems that are specific to healthcare monitoring.”
Wearable and Implantable Wireless Sensor Network Solutions for Healthcare Monitoring (2011, background): “The Quality of Service-aware MAC protocols [89] for low power wireless sensor networks such as 802.15.4 still need research from a healthcare specific perspective.”
Infotainment and road safety service support in vehicular networking : From a communication perspective $ (2010, background): “Despite the fact that there exists a very rich body of research work on MAC protocols in the literature [35] [36] [37], most of them are not suitable for a vehicular environment due to the unique network characteristics and design objectives of VANETs.”
A survey on wireless body area networks (2011, background): “As networking in Wireless Sensor Networks has some points in common with networking in WBANs, it is useful to consider the research in MACprotocols designed for WSNs. An overview can be found in [ 66 , 67].”
Energy conservation in wireless sensor networks: A survey (2009, background): “Several MAC protocols for wireless sensor networks have been proposed, and many surveys and introductory papers on MAC protocols are available in the literature (see, for example, [29], [79], [96] and [147]).”
The Progressive Smart Grid System from Both Power and Communications Aspects (2012, neutral): “Not only should compatibility and interoperability among communications technologies coexisting in the PHY/MAC layers be possibly made available, but also their data objects as well as information representation (e.g., DLMS or Device Language Message Specification [33], ZigBee, Wireless M-Bus) shoul”