HMC-MAC Protocol for High Data Rate Wireless Sensor Networks

Using multiple channels in wireless sensor networks helps increase the overall throughput and avoid interferences. In addition, introducing multi-interface nodes further helps in increasing the packet delivery rate for those specific nodes. In this paper, we evaluate a channel allocation method based on neighborhood discovery up to 3 hops and a hybrid MAC protocol designed for high data rate wireless sensor networks. We propose a network segmentation that takes into consideration the existence of multi-interface sink in order to further increase to packet delivery ratio. Our protocol, called HMC-MAC, uses Time Devision Multiple Access (TDMA) for sequencing nodes activity, and Carrier Sense Multiple Access (CSMA)/CA with Frequency Devision Multiple Access (FDMA) for simultaneous data exchange. We evaluated our method using NS2 simulator and results show that HMC-MAC protocol improves the overall network performance compared to other protocols especially with high data rate and burst traffic.