Low Energy Consumption MAC Protocol for Wireless Sensor Networks

Recent technological advances in sensors, low power integrated circuits, and wireless communications have enabled the design of low-cost, lightweight, and intelligent physiological sensor nodes. The IEEE 802.15.4 is a new wireless personal area network standard designed for wireless monitoring and control applications. The fast progress of research on energy efficiency in wireless sensor networks, and the need to compare with the solutions adopted in the standards motivates the need for this work. In the analysis presented, the star network configuration of 802.15.4 standard at 868 MHz is considered for a Zigbee network. In this paper, a new MAC protocol, EMAC, has been proposed. We analyzed the active duration of the superframe and entered the sleep mode status inside this active period. By this mechanism, the idle listening will be decreased and leads to more energy efficiency.