RUF-MAC: Related and Urgent First MAC for Wireless Sensor Networks

Medium Access Control (MAC) protocols of Wireless Sensor Network (WSN) are often required to have special characteristics in concrete applications. Related and Urgent message should be sent First (RUF) is a typical scenario in many applications of WSN. In this paper, we focus on presenting a MAC protocol for RUF applications in WSN. First of all, through analysis, some concrete cases of RUF scenario are listed, from which 4 common requirements of MAC protocols are summed up. Then a novel RUF-MAC is devised to meet these requirements. By modifying the frame structure of IEEE 802.15.4 standards, new algorithms are presented for the assignment and adjustment of time slots, of which some measures are introduced into RUF-MAC, such as sub-frames competition, priority assignment and adaptive period adjustment. The simulation results of data from RUF scenario show that the performance of RUF-MAC is better than that of other MAC protocols for WSN in RUF scenario.