FE-MAC: A Forwarding Election-based MAC Protocol for Wireless Sensor Networks

Jian Qiang; Gong Zhenghu; Gui Chunmei

2nd International ICST Workshop on Performance Control in Wireless Sensor Networks

Research Article

FE-MAC: A Forwarding Election-based MAC Protocol for Wireless Sensor Networks

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Cite: BibTeX Plain Text

@INPROCEEDINGS{10.4108/pwsn.2007.2276,
    author={Jian Qiang and Gong Zhenghu and Gui Chunmei},
    title={FE-MAC: A Forwarding Election-based MAC Protocol for Wireless Sensor Networks},
    proceedings={2nd International ICST Workshop on Performance Control in Wireless Sensor Networks},
    proceedings_a={PWSN},
    year={2010},
    month={5},
    keywords={Wireless Sensor Network Medium Access Protocols Energy-efficient Load Balance Cross-layer Design Trade-off.},
    doi={10.4108/pwsn.2007.2276}
}

Jian Qiang
Gong Zhenghu
Gui Chunmei
Year: 2010
FE-MAC: A Forwarding Election-based MAC Protocol for Wireless Sensor Networks
PWSN
ICST
DOI: 10.4108/pwsn.2007.2276

Jian Qiang¹^,*, Gong Zhenghu²^,*, Gui Chunmei³^,*

1: School of Computer, National University of Defense Technology, Changsha, 410073, China +86-13786192176
2: School of Computer, National University of Defense Technology, Changsha, 410073, China +86-731-4575980
3: School of Computer, National University of Defense Technology, Changsha, 410073, China +86-13787081041

*Contact email: alloysteal@hotmail.com, gzhu@nudt.edu.cn, plantsperfume@yahoo.com

Abstract

Influenced by the design principles of the layered network protocol stack, current MAC protocols in wireless sensor network usually resort to improving energy efficiency as a major energy saving means, with little considerations of load balance, which limits the network lifetime. In this paper, a forwarding election-based MAC protocol, FE-MAC, is proposed. By means of load balance improvement, energy is evenly consumed among nodes, and network lifetime is further extended. FE-MAC protocol adopts the forwarding election mechanism, in which nodes are organized to contend for the right of packet forwarding according to their residual energy, the more energy a node has, the more forwarding tasks it will take, and load balance and routing capability are realized. The experiments show that: compared with S-MAC and T-MAC, in wireless sensor networks of different scale, FE-MAC can prominently extend network lifetime, and the larger the number of nodes is, the better FE-MAC protocol performs. FE-MAC is more suitable to configuring large scale wireless sensor networks.

Keywords: Wireless Sensor Network Medium Access Protocols Energy-efficient Load Balance Cross-layer Design Trade-off.

Published: 2010-05-16
Modified: 2011-09-18

: http://dx.doi.org/10.4108/pwsn.2007.2276