Medium Access Control with Dynamic Frame Length in Wireless Sensor Networks

Wireless sensor networks consist of sensor nodes which are expected to be battery-powered and are hard to replace or recharge. Thus, reducing the energy consumption of sensor nodes is an important design consideration in wireless sensor networks. For the implementation of an energy-efficient MAC protocol, a Sensor-MAC based on the IEEE 802.11 protocol, which has energy efficient scheduling, has been proposed. In this paper, we propose a Dynamic S-MAC that adapts dynamically to the network-traffic state. The dynamic S-MAC protocol improves the energy consumption of the S-MAC by changing the frame length according to the network-traffic state. Using an NS-2 Simulator, we compare the performance of the Dynamic S-MAC with that of the SMAC protocol. Keywords—Sensor Networks, Energy-Efficient MAC, S-MAC