A Comparative Study on AS-MAC and Crankshaft: The MAC Layer Protocols for Wireless Sensor Network

Abstract

Wireless Sensor Networks (WSN) is an emerging area of research in the field of wireless communication [1]. WSN applications include environmental monitoring, industrial process monitoring and target detection and tracking in an enemy terrain and many more. Though it has wide range of application domain, the basic constraint i.e. the power constraint of WSN still remains a challenge and a potential field of research.MAC layer protocols play an important role in energy conservation. Being affected by the physical layer and providing services to the upper layer, many MAC protocols has been proposed for the smooth operation and to help reduce energy utilization in WSN. Many of these protocols are either contention based i.e. CSMA (Carrier Sense Multiple Access) or reservation based i.e. TDMA (Time Division Multiple Access). This paper compares two MAC layer protocols i.e. AS-MAC and Crankshaft with their characteristics and behaviors in the WSN environment. The comparative study presented in this paper may be used to find out the best suited MAC protocol for Wireless Sensor Networks.