A generic wake-up radio based MAC protocol for energy efficient short range communication

To avoid idle listening and to improve energy efficiency in short range communication networks, a generic wake-up radio (WUR) based medium access control (GWR-MAC) protocol is proposed. GWR-MAC is not restricted to a specific WUR technology or data radio technology, and therefore it is suitable for a variety of scenarios in wireless sensor and body area networks. GWR-MAC includes a bidirectional wake-up procedure and a transmission period for data communication. Two different options for the wake-up procedure are defined: source-initiated and sink-initiated. The data transmission period can be implemented by using different type of channel access methods, which enables scalability. This paper describes the GWR-MAC protocol and an analytical model which is used to explore the energy efficiency of the proposed GWR-MAC based network and conventional duty cycle MAC based network. The comparison is done as a function of number of events to enable the selection of a correct radio technology for different application scenarios. The results clearly illustrate the usefulness and energy efficiency of the proposed protocol especially in applications that have low event frequency and require a low delay wake-up procedure.