Comparison of S-MAC & TDMA-W Protocols for Energy Efficient Wireless Sensor Networks

Energy efficiency is a major consideration while designing wireless sensor network nodes. Most sensor network applications require energy autonomy for the complete lifetime of the node, which may span up to several years. These energy constraints require that the system be built such that each component consumes minimum possible power. Consequently, the main objective is to devise strategies for energy reduction in different physical components while implementing all layers of the network protocol stack within a node. This paper compares S-MAC (a random access MAC Protocol) and TDMA-W (a scheduled MAC protocol) for wireless sensor networks in terms of their energy efficiency. The network layer protocol is assumed to be fixed for this comparison and is the energy aware routing protocol. This paper presents initial results while comparing different S-MAC and TDMA-W schemes