μ-MAC: an energy-efficient medium access control for wireless sensor networks

For the long-term deployment of wireless sensor networks, energy efficient MAC protocols are necessary. The transceiver of a sensor node should only consume energy while actively taking part in communication. Energy consumption in idle mode should be avoided as much as possible. In this paper it is shown how application layer knowledge in the form of flow specifications can be used to improve the energy properties of a MAC protocol. A new protocol, named μ-MAC, is proposed and evaluated through simulations.