An Asynchronous Duty Cycle Adjustment MAC Protocol for Wireless Sensor Networks

In this paper, we propose an asynchronous duty cycle adjustment MAC protocol, called ADCA, for the wireless sensor network (WSN). ADCA is a sleep/wake protocol to reduce power consumption without lowering network throughput or lengthening transmission delay. It is asynchronous; it allows each node in the WSN to set its own sleep/wake schedule independently. The media access is thus staggered and collisions are reduced. According to the statuses of previous transmission, ADCA adjusts the duty cycle length for shortening transmission delay and increasing throughput. We implement ADCA and T-MAC protocols on WSNTB (Wireless Sensor Network TestBed) and simulate them by ns-2 simulator for the sake of performance evaluation and comparison. The experiment results show that ADCA has better performance in terms of energy saving, network throughput and transmission delay.