Flexible and energy‐efficient duty cycling in wireless networks with MacZ

Abstract

SUMMARYIn wireless networks formed of battery‐powered nodes, energy consumption is a major concern. On the communication side, energy can be saved by switching transceivers to idle or power‐down mode when not needed. To this end, duty cycling protocols located at medium access control level have been devised. These protocols have in common that they define modified carrier sense multiple access with collision avoidance schemes and that they assume the availability of some time synchronization mechanism. This strongly limits their potential to reduce energy consumption, as well as their flexibility regarding activity phases. In this paper, we propose a more flexible and energy‐efficient solution for duty cycling, which is based on our experimental wireless medium access control protocol MacZ. Flexibility is strengthened by the possibility to define weakly periodic activity periods. Energy efficiency is improved by the possibility to assign exclusive transmission slots, thereby switching transceivers to active mode only when needed. Both measures are supported by an underlying protocol for accurate, deterministic tick and time synchronization. We assess our solution and compare it to well‐known duty cycling protocols on the basis of real‐life scenarios. Copyright © 2012 John Wiley & Sons, Ltd.

Persistence of routing tables in Wireless Mesh Networks with duty cycling

“…Even if nodes are not synchronized, two nodes will be active at the same time for a period of time in every cycle of the schedule. Christmann et al propose a mechanism based in the MACZ link layer protocol [11]. This protocol has a different CSMA/CA scheme and uses a network synchronization method in which the network is synchronized by timestamps.…”

Special Issue Editorial: New technologies of distributed systems

“…The paper of Dennis Christmann et al [4] proposes a more flexible and energy-efficient solution for duty cycling, which is based on wireless MAC protocol MacZ. Flexibility is strengthened by the possibility to define weakly periodic activity periods.…”

RPLL - Rendezvous protocol for long-living sensor node

“…In this way, depending on the network activity, the SN switches its mode of operation between active and sleep. Duty-cycling protocols based on rendezvous scheme not only arrange for SNs to communicate, but also inherently include the availability to plan the channel access time, avoiding and resolving collisions, and some time-synchronization mechanisms which are required to locally determines the beginning of the active and sleep state [4,6,7].…”