An energy efficient MAC protocol for fully-connected wireless networks

Power consumption is an important consideration in deploying wireless networks, especially for battery-powered mobile devices such as smartphones. Radio interface is the main source of energy consumption in mobile devices. Medium access control (MAC) directly controls the radio interface operation; therefore, an efficient MAC protocol can significantly decrease the energy consumption. This paper presents a new energy efficient MAC scheme for fully connected wireless networks. Time is divided into beacon intervals and a temporary coordinator node manages transmission in each beacon interval. The proposed scheme reduces energy consumption by putting radio interfaces in the sleep state periodically and reducing transmission collision. Simulation results show that the proposed scheme has lower power consumption, higher throughput and lower delay than existing power saving MAC protocols.