A MAC protocol for low-rate UWB wireless sensor networks using directional antennas

Ultra-wideband (UWB) is a key solution for wireless connectivity, characterized by ultralow power consumption and a good degree of robustness to interference and multipath fading. Evidence of its significance, is its recent use in the IEEE 802.15.4a standard. UWB technology with joint consideration of directional antennas can benefit when compared to classical omni-directional antennas from the energy conservation viewpoint, which is of fundamental concern when it comes to wireless sensor networks (WSNs). However, exploiting directionality requires new approach in the design of a medium access control (MAC) protocol to be applied. In this work, idle nodes continuously rotate their receiving beams over 360 until a predefined preamble trailer is detected. The resulting scheme is a directional ultra-wideband MAC protocol, named DU-MAC, which deals effectively with the problem of deafness and the problem of determination of neighbors’ location. Simulation-based studies will demonstrate the effectiveness of the proposed protocol in many critical parameters, such as throughput and network lifetime. 2008 Elsevier B.V. All rights reserved.