Power Efficient and Low Latency MAC for Wireless Sensor Networks

Existing protocols for medium access in wireless sensor networks opt for staggered wakeup scheduling among clusters of nodes. However intra-cluster contention and interference has remained an unaddressed issue. In this work we propose PELLMAC: power efficient and low latency MAC for wireless sensor networks, a schema that addresses node scheduling for channel access. By limiting contention between adjacent branches of the data gathering tree, we are able to reduce the latency of the network, as well as optimize energy utilization. Simulation results, in accordance with our claims, show that PELLMAC enhances performance in energy savings, latency and delivery ratio