Increasing performance for multichannel distributed coordination in wireless sensor networks

Self-organizing desynchronization in wireless sensor networks leads to near-optimal time-division multiple access (TDMA) behavior in the network´s steady-state, without requiring a coordinator node. In order to increase bandwidth utilization, desynchronization can be extended to multi-channel MAC protocols. In this paper, we proposed a new protocol for the medium access control layer of IEEE 802.15.4 standard to improve connectivity for the multichannel distributed coordination in wireless sensor networks. The biggest advantages of the proposed protocol are its low complexity and the fact that it can be easily implemented in real world WSNs. We demonstrate the proposed protocol in TinyOS iMote2 wireless sensors and show that it can obtain high bandwidth efficiency and also decrease the converged delay to steady state.