EVA-MAC: An event-based adaptive medium access control for wireless sensor networks

Event-based systems are typically characterized by having long periods of sleep and short abrupt periods of high data traffic when an event is detected. High throughput event-based sensor network applications are severely limited by the medium access control layer. EVA-MAC is a medium access control that is tailored specifically for event based systems. In event-based systems, multiple sensors that are in communication range of each other collaborate to execute a specified task. As the number of sensors per hop increases, high contention is generated as multiple sensors detecting the event contend to deliver data to the base station. This contention will lower the throughput, increase latency and deteriorate the application´s performance. EVA-MAC is simulated with NS2 and compared with an implementation of S-MAC and 802.11. EVA-MAC presented its superiority in throughput, Latency and energy consumption.