Powermesh medium access control protocol

Powermesh MAC protocol is a relatively simple protocol designed for applications that mostly have a regular schedule of data transport activities such as routine status reports of a monitored power system. In particular, this protocol is designed for sensor network nodes that tend to be arranged in an approximately linear configuration, such as along the power lines. The Powermesh MAC protocol is designed with a special intention to allow the nodes to have low duty-cycles. A special feature of this protocol is that each node transmits its own beacon to announce its presence and to send signaling information related to the available time slots. The individual beacons and individual neighbourhood maps are the basic features of the Powermesh MAC protocol. The neighbourhood map is a small data structure which indicates timeslot usage by the node´s neighbours. The Powermesh MAC addresses the hidden terminal problem and the exposed terminal problems by individual beacons and neighborhood maps.