One of the key factors for the wide acceptance and deployment of IEEE 802.11 Wireless Local Area Networks (WLANs) is the simplicity and robustness of the Medium Access Control (MAC) protocol. Based on the well-known carrier sense paradigm, with an exponential backoff mechanism devised to minimize the probability of simultaneous transmission attempts by multiple stations, the protocol is able to...

In the past decade, the development of wireless communication technologies has made the use of the Internet ubiquitous. With the increasing number of new inventions and applications using wireless communication, more interference is introduced among wireless devices that results in limiting the capacity of wireless networks. Many approaches have been proposed to improve the capacity. One approa...

The IEEE 802.15.4 standard for wireless sensor networks (WSNs) can support energy efficient, reliable, and timely packet transmission by tuning the medium access control (MAC) parameters macMinBE;macMaxCSMABackoffs, and macMaxFrameRetries. Such a tuning is difficult, because simple and accurate models of the influence of these parameters on the probability of successful packet transmission, pac...

Medium Access control(MAC) protocol is the most widely used protocol for Adhoc networks. However, in practice, deafness, hidden-terminal, and exposed terminal problems are exaggerated with directional antennas, and they cause the degradation of the overall network performance. Although there are several random-access-based medium-access control (MAC) protocols being proposed in the literature f...

In this chapter, the practical and experimental aspects of medium access control protocol design for wireless sensor networks are discussed. We outline the basic design principles of medium access control procedures and the general development trends from the perspective of real world implementations. We take into account especially energy consumption and latency requirements. We share our expe...

In order to realize real-time communication over Ethernet or fast Ethernet, one must be able to bound the medium access time within an acceptable limit. The multiple access nature of an Ethernet makes it impossible to guarantee a deterministic medium access time (hence packet delivery deadlines) to individual stations. However, one can bound the medium access time statistically by limiting the ...

Wireless sensor networks make the previously unobservable, observable. The basic idea behind these networks is straightforward: all wires are cut in traditional sensing systems and the sensors are equipped with batteries and radio’s to virtually restore the cut wires. The resulting sensors can be placed closely to the phenomenon that needs monitoring, without imposing high wiring costs and care...