Optimized ML-MAC for energy-efficient Wireless Sensor Network protocol

Energy efficient protocol design for Wireless Sensor Networks (WSNs) is a very challenging task because of limited battery capacity of nodes. This necessity for energy efficient operation of a WSN has prompted the development of new protocols in all layers of the communication stack. Layer-wise utilization of densely deployed nodes to effectively prolong the overall network life is presented in this paper. Simulation is done in QualNet 6.1 network simulator. Effective number of layers as well as effective node density over a terrain is also analyzed to achieve energy efficient design. Layering helps the network to work for a long time as only one layer in the network is in action at a time, rest layers are completely sleeping. Also, sensor nodes in ML-MAC (Multi-Layer MAC) have a very short listening time that reduces the energy consumption during communication. The results are used to create a parameter estimator through MATLAB.