A survey of energy efficient MAC protocols for IEEE 802.11 WLAN

0140-3664/$ see front matter 2010 Elsevier B.V. A doi:10.1016/j.comcom.2010.09.008 ⇑ Corresponding author. Address: 1001 University ROC. Tel.: +886 3 5712121x54717; fax: +886 3 57214 E-mail addresses: [email protected] (S.-L. Tsao Huang). In recent years, IEEE 802.11 wireless local area networks (WLANs) have been widely deployed, and more and more mobile devices have built-in WLAN interfaces. However, WLAN employs the carrier sense multiple access with collision avoidance (CSMA/CA) medium access control (MAC) protocol, which consumes a significant portion of the energy resources of a mobile device. Hence, minimizing the energy consumption of the WLAN interface in mobile devices has recently attracted considerable interest in both academia and industry. This article provides a survey and an experimental study of the energy consumption issues and energy-efficient technologies of the MAC protocol in IEEE 802.11 WLAN. 2010 Elsevier B.V. All rights reserved.