Combining sender- and receiver-driven MAC protocols for a large-scale metering system based on potential routing

Smart metering system needs to collect the measurement values of the meter installed in each home as much as possible for a short time. In the past research, we have proposed a multihop wireless network by potential routing as a technique for realizing a large-scale smart metering system. As a MAC protocol, we applied IRDT (Intermittent Receiver Driven Transmission) method which performs receiver-driven type intermittent operation. However, in the area of the around of a center station with heavy load, since there were many nodes holding a transmitting packet, multiple SREQ (Send REQuest) packets collided to an ID packet which the receiver transmitted, and it became clear that there is a problem of increase of delay or decrease of a packet collection rate. In order to solve such a problem, I propose applying a sender-riven type MAC protocol in the heavy load area of the network. That is, the proposal of this research is combining two techniques according to load, and aims at improving network performance.