MAC Protocol for Energy Efficiency and Service Differentiation with High Goodput in Wireless Sensor Networks

Abstract

In the sensor networks for surveillance, the requirements of providing energy efficiency and service differentiation, which is to deliver high-priority packets preferentially, while maintaining high goodput, which is to deliver many packets within their deadline are increasing. However, previous works have difficulties in satisfying the requirements simultaneously. Thus, we propose GES-MAC, which satisfies the requirements simultaneously. GES-MAC reduces idle listening energy consumption by using a duty cycle, periodic listen (i.e., turn on radio module) and sleep (i.e. turn off radio module) of sensor nodes. Cluster-based multi-hop scheduling provides high goodput in a duty-cycled environment by scheduling clusters of nodes in the listen period and opportunistically forwarding data packets in the sleep period. Priority-aware schedule switching makes more high-priority packets reach the sink node by letting high-priority packets preempt the schedules of low-priority packets. In experiments with MICA2 based sensor nodes and in simulations, the energy consumption of the radio module is reduced by 70% compared to the approaches without a duty cycle, while providing 80% similar to 100% goodput of the approaches that provide high goodput. Service differentiation is also supported with little overhead.