MAC-aware routing in wireless sensor networks

Generally, the traditional layered protocol architecture is used to design protocols for wireless sensor networks in which MAC and Routing protocols act independently and this may cause counteraction between them. Cross-layer protocols are known to be more efficient. In this paper, we present MAR-WSN, a MAC-aware Routing protocol for Wireless Sensor Networks, in which the next hop decisions are made based on the TDMA scheduling and the two-hop neighbourhood knowledge. Coherent decisions in space, taken by the routing protocol, with those taken by the MAC protocol, in time, prove to be efficient against several metrics: delay, energy consumption and hop number. The simulation results show good performance of our strategy in medium and high density networks compared to the state of the art.