Design and Implementation of a Medium Access Protocol for a Heterogeneous Wireless Sensor Network

Abstract

The present work is focused on the development and implementation of a low energy consuming medium access protocol, based on the characteristics of the S-MAC (Sensor Medium Access Control) [7] protocol, with a test scenario of a homogeneous network that uses heterogeneous information. Several other protocols are being implemented under similar conditions but this has been proven to be far from optimal [4]. It is proposed the design of a protocol that allows, through a sleep-active time schedule,energy savings, synchronization and correct management of heterogeneous information. The approach to managing heterogeneous information is made by assigning different medium access priority to each kind of information. On the test scenario it's used "continuous monitoring" mode, where nodes use a CSMA/RTS medium acces protocol, and "priority mode", where nodes that need to transmit information that has higher information get to do so immediately while the rest of the nodes enter sleep mode. In this way we can guarantee there are energy savings and at the same time different kinds of information are being transmitted.