Special Issue - 2019 International Journal of Engineering Research & Technology (IJERT)

ISSN: 2278-0181
RTESIT - 2019 Conference Proceedings

A Review Paper based on Various Mac Protocols

for Wireless Sensor Networks
Rashmi Shifana Begum
P.G Student Asst Professor
Department of Computer Science and Engineering Department of Computer Science and Engineering
Srinivas University, Mukka, Srinivas University, Mukka,
Mangalore, India Mangalore, India

Professor B.R Kishore

Head of the Department
Computer science and Engineering
Srinivas University, Mukka, Mangalore, India

Abstract- A wireless sensor network (WSN) is formed by the nodes the battery and along creating energy-efficient networks. In
which observes the surroundings. Like temperature, humidity, spite of the progress made in this direction, the lifetime of
pressure, position, vibration, sound etc. The sensor networks are
used for many real-time applications to perform many different
battery Powered devices continues to be a key challenge,
tasks example smart detecting, monitoring and control, to discover hence it requires additional research in energy efficient
the neighbouring node, to process the data, and storage, for the design of the platforms, protocols, and systems. In order to
routing between the nodes and base stations. In wireless sensor overcome the limitations in the hardware, Moreover the
network the resources are limited hence, it requires a special MAC energy efficiency can be accomplished from the energy-
protocols. The medium access control (MAC) is an important efficient communication protocols design. In wireless
technique that ensures the successful operation of wireless sensor
networks because it controls the radio’s activity of sensor nodes,
networks, energy consumption is a major performance
which consumes node’s major energy. Therefore it is important metric. If the energy consumption is lesser the functioning
that MAC protocols must be energy efficient in the wireless sensor period of the node/network is longer. Hence, there is an
network as it coordinates all the nodes to share the wireless increasing interest in the power saving. Conserving energy
medium. In our paper we describe the categorization of MAC is not a problem in any particular layer of the network
protocol, MAC layer related sensor network properties.
protocol stack; so researchers have focused on different
Keywords— WSN, Medium Access Control, Radio Energy Model,
layers in order to conserve energy more efficiently. MAC
Synchronous protocol, Asynchronous protocol, Frame Slotted layer involves in the function and procedure which is
Protocol, Multichannel Protocol. necessary to transfer the data between two or more number
of nodes in the network. The fundamental role of the MAC
I. INTRODUCTION protocol is to avoiding the collisions occurring by the
A sensor network’s cover a huge number of spatially interfering nodes. The energy dissipated is more in the time
distributed, embedded devices that are networked to period of idle listening period. Designing power efficient
carefully collect the data, process the data and transfer the MAC protocol is one of the ways to extend the life time of
data to the operators and it has controlled the capabilities of the network. Sensor nodes consists of batteries, hence it is
processing and computing. The sensor nodes are nothing but difficult to replace the batteries which are worn out. The
a small computers, they work together to form a networks. activities in a sensor node which are main sources of energy
In order to exchange the information with the neighbouring consumptions are (I) sensing, ( ii) computation, and ( iii )
nodes the MAC protocol control the sensors to access a radio operation. Out of these three activities the energy loss
shared radio channel. which occurs during the data transmission is maximum in
Wireless sensor networks (WSNs) comprise of one or radio communication [1].
more battery-operated sensor nodes along with the single Therefore, in WSN design the main aim is to maximize the
chip embedded processor for processing unit, low power node or the network lifetime. The energy consuming unit i.e.
radio for wireless communication unit and small amount of , the wireless radio for the data communication operates in
processing memory, so as to reduce the energy consumption four different states namely: sleep, idle, transmit, receive [2]
by the sensor nodes because these sensor nodes have only . Although, all the active states consume the same amount of
the battery power as the source of energy. Maximizing the energy. Hence this problem can be tackled at software level
battery life is a big concern for all types of energy and MAC layer is the most suitable level to tackle the energy
constrained networks. Most of the research which focused inefficiency. The MAC layer provides a better control of the
on improvements in hardware technology have resulted in transceiver, and allows ON/OFF switching of the wireless
the design of low-power and low-cost electronic devices. radio.
This objective can be attained by maximizing the power of

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Special Issue - 2019 International Journal of Engineering Research & Technology (IJERT)
ISSN: 2278-0181
RTESIT - 2019 Conference Proceedings

The main aim of an energy saving mechanism of the MAC number it is in and the parent aggregates the data until its
layer is how and when such switching have to be performed. turn to communicate.
In a WSN, when preserving the highest throughput, the Wise MAC [10] is a short wakeup preamble it uses the
minimum latency and maximum energy conservation. It knowledge of sampling schedule of direct neighbours of
should increase the sleep period of the node. The MAC the sender node.
protocol designed for WSN focuses on minimizing the Funnelling MAC is a hybrid TDMA/CSMA scheme
energy consumption. proposed to be used in the intensity region, under the control
of the sink for small intensity region depths of one or two
hops.
II. LITERATURE SURVEY Traffic-adaptive MAC protocol (TRAMA) is a TDMA
Sensor-MAC (S-MAC) [3] is a CSMA based protocol in based protocol and it uses an election algorithm to select
which each and every node follows a periodic sleep and the one sender within two-hop neighbourhood. In TRAMA time
listen time for energy efficiency. Neighbouring nodes inside is divided into random-access and the scheduled-access
a virtual clusters follow the same sleep/listen schedule and periods. The random-access period is used to establish
the neighbouring nodes in two different virtual clusters two-hop topology information. In scheduled-access period,
follow the periods of both clusters. each node exchange its transmission schedule to its
Dynamic Sensor MAC (DSMAC) [4] goal is to improve the neighbours. The election algorithm is used to select the
latency time of S-MAC by adjusting the duty cycle of node sender and receiver for the current time slot.
based on the traffic and energy conditions dynamically. In Zebra MAC (Z-MAC) is a hybrid MAC protocol. It is a
DSMAC all nodes have the same duty cycle value and traffic adaptive protocol; in the low contention it behaves
shared one-hop latency values in the SYNC period. When a like CSMA to achieve high channel utilisation and low
receiver node detects the average one-hop latency value to delay, and in high contention it behaves like TDMA to
be high, it shortens its sleep time and announces it within achieve high channel utilisation and less collision. The
the SYNC period. And the sender node doubles its duty efficient scheduling adjustment method is used to tolerate
cycle after receiving this sleep period decrement signal. The the network topology and the data traffic variation.
latency observed in DSMAC is observed to be better than S- Energy efficient and Quality of service aware MAC (EQ-
MAC. MAC) is a Hybrid MAC protocol. It differentiates the long
Timeout MAC (T-MAC) [5] improves the energy and short messages and it uses the priority techniques
efficiency of S-MAC by reducing the listening period of for higher priority data. It uses schedule and non-schedule
sensor node during variable traffic conditions, as the nodes techniques for data transmission for greater performance.
closer to the sink must relay more traffic. Accordingly, a
node ends its listen period when no activation event has III. ENERGY MODEL
occurred for a time threshold TA. The energy management is the important concern in
Berkeley Media Access Control (B-MAC) [6] a node WSN. It is necessary to design an efficient energy model
will self-regulates the wakeup time and sleep time. The because in WSN there is difficulty to replace the battery,
summation of awake time and sleep time period is called as there is lack of central coordination and limited energy
check interval. The sender node sends a wake-up preamble, source in battery
which is not a packet but a physical layer RF pulse, greater The main aim in the energy constrained
than the check interval which is followed by data packet. communication is conserving the energy and we need to
When the receiver node wakes up, then it senses the medium concentrate on minimizing the transmission energy. There
and if it detects the preamble, it waits for the preamble to are four modes of operations Hence, the consumption of
end. If the data packet is for the node itself, it receives it power of radio interface depends on these modes. The modes
otherwise goes to sleep. are active, sleep, idle, transient. The active mode consumes
Pattern MAC (PMAC) [7] is CSMA based protocol. In maximum power because of transmission of packets. Idle
PMAC the wakeup and sleep time of nodes are changed mode consumes more power because it is waiting for either
dynamically depending on its own traffic pattern and that of transmitting or receiving the packets. Sleep mode consumes
the neighbour’s. less power. Usually transition time is very less in transient
X-MAC [8] uses the technique of strobed preamble where, mode but if any frequent transition occurs among the node
the sender node sends a series of short preamble packets then power consumption will be more. Hence, the total
which contain the receiver node`s address. This allows the energy consumption represented by ‘E’ by a node to transmit
target node to interrupt the short preambles by sending ‘K’ bit can be expressed as:
acknowledgement, thus saving energy and reducing latency. E = Pactive × Tactive + Psleep × Tsleep + Ptransient ×
Ttransient + Pidle × Tidle
Low Latency MAC (LL-MAC) [9] is a TDMA based Pactive, Psleep, Ptransient, Pidle are the power consumption
protocol which is designed with low latency as the primary Tactive, Tsleep, Ttransient, Tidle are the duration of time.
goal. The data interval is divided into X divisions which in Pactive is the summation of transmitted signal power Psig
turn is divided into Y time slot subdivisions. Each node and circuit power Pckt. So ‘E’ can be expressed as
communicates to its parent in the time slot subdivision E = (Psig + Pckt) × Tactive + Psleep × Tsleep + Ptransient
within the assigned division corresponding to the hop × Ttransient + Pidle × Tidle

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Special Issue - 2019 International Journal of Engineering Research & Technology (IJERT)
ISSN: 2278-0181
RTESIT - 2019 Conference Proceedings

The circuit power Pckt consists of the summation of Pmix, of the transmitting node will be the predetermined receivers.
Psyn, Pfilt, PDAC, PIFA, and Pamp. This type of communication pattern is known as local gossip,
Pmix-mixer power consumption, in which a sensor transmits a data to its neighbouring nodes
Psyn-frequency synthesizer power consumption, within a range. In some scenarios, the sensors that detect an
PLNA-low noise amplifier power, intruder communicate with each other locally. This kind of
PIFA intermediate frequency amplifier power, communication pattern is called local gossip, where a sensor
Pfilt at transmitter active filter power consumption, sends a message to its neighbouring nodes within a range. The
Active filter power consumption Pfilr at receiver, sensors that detect the intruder, then, they need to send what
Analog to digital power PADC at receiver, they perceive to the information centre. That communication
Digital to analog power consumption PDCA at transmitter pattern is called converge cast, where a group of sensors
and power amplifier power consumption Pamp. communicate to a specific sensor. The destination node could
The transmitter circuit power consumption: be a cluster head, data fusion center, base station. In protocols
Pckt(t) = Pmix + Psyn + Pfilt + PDAC + PIFA + Pamp that include clustering, cluster heads communicate with their
The receiver circuit power consumption: members and thus the intended receivers may not be all
Pckt(r) = Pmix + Psyn + Pfilr + PADC + PIFA + PLNA + neighbors of the cluster head, but just a subset of the
Pamp neighbors. To serve for such scenarios, we define a fourth
type of communication pattern, multicast, where a sensor
IV. MEDIUM ACCESS CONTROL (MAC) LAYER sends a message to a specific subset of sensors.

The MAC layer operates inside the data link layer to C. Properties of a Well-defined MAC Protocol
directly interface with the physical layer in order to provide To design a good MAC protocol for the wireless sensor
fair medium access contention and low-level reliable frame networks, the attributes to be considered are: The first
delivery. With its ability to control the radio, the MAC layer attribute is the energy efficiency. We have to define energy
affords significant energy-saving opportunities to extend the efficient protocols to prolong the network lifetime. Another
WSN network lifetime [11][12]. important attribute is scalability and adaptability to changes.
Changes in network size, node density and topology should
A. Reasons of Energy Waste be handled rapidly and effectively for a successful adaptation.
When a receiver node receives more than one packet Some of the reasons behind these network property changes
at the same time, these packets are called “collided packets” are limited node lifetime, addition of new nodes to the
even if they coincide partially. Every packets which are network and varying interference which may alter the
responsible for the collision they have to be thrown out and connectivity and hence the network topology. A well
the re-transmissions of these packets is necessary which designed MAC protocol should gracefully accommodate such
maximizes the energy consumption. Although few packets network changes.
could be recovered by a capture effect, a number of
requirements have to be achieved for its success. Another V. CLASSIFICATION OF MAC PROTOCOL
reason for energy wastage is overhearing, it means that a node
receives packets that are destined to other nodes. The third MAC protocols are classified in four categories:
reason for energy wastage occurs as a result of control packet 5.1 Asynchronous Protocols
overhead. Minimum number of control packets should be Rather than synchronizing all the neighbouring nodes the
used to make a data transmission. One of the major sources of sensor node will itself maintain its own schedule in order to
energy wastage is idle listening, i.e., listening to an idle process the data. By this technique the sensor node saves its
channel to receive possible traffic. The last reason for the cost of synchronizing and achieves a low duty cycle. A node
energy wastage is over emitting, which is caused by the cannot be active for long time in order to check the data of its
transmission of a message when the Destination node is not interest it has to wake up periodically. Because of this reason
ready to receive. The reasons mentioned above can i.e. energy a preamble sampling technique is used. In this technique
wastage can be overcome by designing an efficient MAC information sent by the sender along with the long preamble
protocol. to the desired receivers. By this the throughput is limited
because of long preamble there will be over utilization of the
B. Communication Patterns channel. To overcome this problem i.e. in order to increase
Kulkarni et al. defines three types of communication patterns the throughput and to manage the size of preamble there are
in wireless sensor networks: broadcast, converge cast, and some techniques.
local gossip. Broadcast type of communication pattern is 5.1.1 Asynchronous MAC protocols:
generally used by a base station (sink) to transmit some B-MAC (Berkeley MAC) [8] makes use of a preamble
information to all sensor nodes of the network. Broadcasted sampling to minimize the idle listening issue which is a big
information may contain queries of sensor query- processing source of energy wastage. Also to avoid collisions CSMA
architectures, program updates for sensor nodes, control with preamble sampling performs CCA (clear channel
packets for the whole system. The broadcast type assessment) before transmitting a preamble. B-MAC
communication pattern is where, all the nodes in a network performs an outlier detection to improve the quality of CCA.
are predetermined receivers. While in the broadcast type This special technique of preamble sampling is known as Low
packet the nodes which are inside the communication range Power Listening (LPL). Still the hidden terminal problem has

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Special Issue - 2019 International Journal of Engineering Research & Technology (IJERT)
ISSN: 2278-0181
RTESIT - 2019 Conference Proceedings

not been solved because preamble transmission of one node TABLE I

may collide with the data transmission of neighbor. DIFFERENT ASYNCHRONOUS MAC PROTOCOLS
To overcome this STEM (Sparse Topology and Energy Protocols Techniques Advantage Disadvantage
Management) protocol is introduced with two radios one for DPS-MAC Short strobed Idle listening The switching
preamble and is reduced due time of radio is
data and another for wake up channel. STEM has two low power to high energy sensitive
categories STEM-T (STEM Tone) and STEM-B (STEM listening efficiency for because it can
Beacon). STEM-B is less energy efficient than STEM-T as low traffic affect the size
channel sampling period should be longer than that of the application of short
preamble
wake-up tone in STEM-T. B-MAC Lower power Frames do not Overhead is
These two protocols were facing the problem of collision, listening require delay more due to
hidden terminal problems due to the long preamble. tolerant long preamble
ENBMAC (Enhanced MAC) is used to detect the X-MAC Minimized Energy Neighbour
preamble efficiency is transmits the
overhearing problem by including timing data about when the length high and packets by
data transmission begins. Based on the gap in the chunks of latency mistake If it
packets this technique is categorized as (i) Continuous operation is gaps in
preamble sampling and (ii) Strobed preamble sampling. lesser packets.
According to that time a node will decide to stay active mode Speck-MAC Continuous At receiver the Because of
preamble energy is redundancy
or in sleep mode. sampling reduced the
In strobed preamble sampling protocol we can send the data transmission
immediately without any delay because ACK will be sent power is
soon after the receiver receives the first preamble. By this the wasted
PW MAC Wakeup timer Because of Overhead due
data transmission delay can be minimized and can make is estimated at pseudo- to beacons and
energy efficient protocol and also idle listening and the receiver random idle listening
overhearing can be avoided by the neighbouring nodes. schedules
collisions and
low delay can
5.2 Synchronous Protocols be avoided
Synchronous MAC protocols. In order to set up a common RC MAC Reduced Even in high Delay
sleep/active schedule in a cluster to make cluster from many collision in the traffic loads increases
nodes. If a node belongs to many cluster then it has to save receiver throughput is
initiated high
many schedules which will be in conflict. transmission
As we can see in the below figure 1 the node x belongs to two
clusters namely A and B now, in this case the node x has to TABLE II
maintain two schedules. This will increase the additional cost DIFFERENT SYNCHRONOUS MAC PROTOCOLS
for synchronization overhead. The nodes in a cluster listen to Protocols Technique Advantage Disadvantage
channel then the nodes will determine their next wake up time T-MAC Future request Active periods Overhearing
and they broadcast their own schedule. The node can even to send are achieved problem
follow its neighbour’s schedule in case if it receives its optimally
S-MAC Adaptive Consumes less RTS and CTS
neighbouring cluster schedule before broadcasting its own. listening energy increases
A node can also be a bridge between two clusters by accepting energy
one or more schedules. The synchronous MAC protocol R-MAC Data Overhearing is Collision due to
concentrates on throughput and delay. transmission is not present two hidden
shifted to sleep terminals
period
D-MAC Staggered It is flexible to At destination
schedule increased contention can
active slots occur.
and lesser
delay
SCP-MAC Adaptive duty Lower Synchronization
cycle schedule overhead.
maintenance

5.3 Multichannel MAC protocol

Fig. 1 Nodes in one Cluster have same schedule Recent sensor areas support multiple channels for this reason
multichannel MAC protocol is an area of interest for the
researchers. A single channel MAC protocol will have
collision and interfaces in the channels. Hence it cannot be
able to do the parallel transmission. Hence we adopt
multichannel MAC protocol which helps in fast retrieval of
information as a parallel transmission mechanism. In order to
enhance the processing speed nodes are assigned to different

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Special Issue - 2019 International Journal of Engineering Research & Technology (IJERT)
ISSN: 2278-0181
RTESIT - 2019 Conference Proceedings

channels. Multichannel MAC protocol helps in sending data TABLE IV

at high rate and to get high throughput. MULTICHANNEL MAC PROTOCOLS
In figure 2 below 3 concurrent slots are required to send a data Protocol Technique Advantage Disadvantage
which is single channel design but in the multichannel design TMCP Metric Intra-tree Actual
optimization interface value interference
slots of different channels are used for parallel is reduced intensity is not
communication. among trees reflected by
In WSN the radio bandwidth is limited using this bandwidth the metric
only they have to support multitasking and handle the bursty MMSN Cross channel Transmission In WSN
communication can be done in powerful radio
traffic this is one of the big reason for using the multichannel parallel among size is not
protocols. In multichannel, the deficiency is cross channel the useful.
communication it is one of the big problem. Hence, TDMA neighbouring
and FDMA are combined together to reduce this problem. nodes.
TMMAC Cross channel To enhance the Due to toggle
communication flexibility snooping and
dynamic toggle
ATIM window transmission
is used node may lose
energy
MC-LMAC TDMA/FDMA Channel Channel used
to send switching is is lower and
not frequently overhead is
done higher
Y-MAC TDMA/FDMA Dynamic If two
to receive channel receivers opt
selection same channel
scheme is contention
Fig 2 : Comparison between Single and Multi-channel Scheme introduced may occur.

5.4 Frame slotted MAC protocol VI. CONCLUSION

In this paper we have discussed various classifications of
TABLE III MAC protocols in four categories in WSN. The main factors
DIFFERENT FRAME-SLOTTED MAC PROTOCOLS considered for classification are throughput, delay, energy
Protocol Technique Advantage Disadvantage efficiency. In WSN MAC protocols in order to minimize the
TRAMA Adaptive Channel Due to energy consumption by the node, the node must be put to the
assignment utilization is sequential
low power sleep mode. Asynchronous MAC protocol is used
much node priority
compared to the spatial to establish a connection it used the mechanism to measure
Z-MAC reuse of time the best wake up time to send. The synchronous MAC
slot is less protocol concentrates on throughput and delay. Frame-slotted
TreeMAC Enhanced Rather than Node requires MAC protocol overcomes the problem of collision. The
throughput at individual the time to join
destination node the tree because it multichannel MAC protocol is a challenging topic where it
fairness is adopts CSMA has to design a low overhead with dynamic channel allocation
ensured in and has low algorithm. The issue in multichannel MAC protocol is cross
terms of flow channel channel issue. Hence, we can conclude that there is no
priority
Z-MAC Slot stealing In low To discover standardized technique which can classify all the protocol
contention it the abandoned with a similar metric. The above mentioned techniques
produces high slot the having the methods along with the protocols are application
throughput. overhead is oriented designs.
increased
Crankshaft Duty cycle can Nodes having Collisions can
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ISSN: 2278-0181
RTESIT - 2019 Conference Proceedings

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