This work presents a design for nuclear radiation detection and monitoring system in a nuclear facility based on wireless sensor networks (WSNs). Energy efficiency is a critical factor in designing WSNs where a sensor node is small with limited power resources. A reliable WSN must be energy efficient to maximize its lifetime. Media access control (MAC) protocols are essential for the energy-efficiency objectives of WSNs as they directly control the most energy consuming part of a sensor node communications over the shared medium. Different MAC protocols for WSNs are presented. This search will explain the important role of MAC protocols for energy saving and why currently conventional protocols don't fit for the actual requirements. A comparison between two MAC protocols, IEEE802.11 and sensor MAC (SMAC), is presented using network simulator-NS-2.35. Then their performance will be compared to each other. SMAC outperforms IEEE802.11 in total energy conservation by approximately 21%. Power saving is the main aim in the design of nuclear radiation WSN to guarantee more life time for the network.

In time-sensitive applications, such as detecting environmental and individual nuclear radiation exposure, wireless sensor networks are employed.. Such application requires timely detection of radiation levels so that appropriate emergency measures are applied to protect people and the environment from radiation hazards. In these networks, collision and interference in communication between sensor nodes cause more end-to-end delay and reduce the network's performance. A time-division multiple-access (TDMA) media access control protocol guarantees minimum latency and low power consumption. It also overcomes the problem of interference. TDMA scheduling problem determines the minimum length conflict-free assignment of slots in a TDMA frame where each node or link is activated at least once. This paper proposes a meta-heuristic centralized contention-free approach based on TDMA, a modified particle swarm optimization. This approach realizes the TDMA scheduling more efficiently compared with other existing algorithms. Extensive simulations were performed to evaluate the modified approach. The simulation results prove that the proposed scheduling algorithm has a better performance in wireless sensor networks than the interference degree leaves order algorithm and interference degree remaining leaves order algorithm. The results demonstrate also that integrating the proposed algorithm in TDMA protocols significantly optimizes the communication latency reduction and increases the network reliability.