An energy-efficient multi-layer MAC (ML-MAC) protocol for wireless sensor networks

The efficient use of energy is an important performance target to prolong the lifetime of wireless sensor networks (WSNs). As the idle listening of sensor nodes result in primary energy waste, many typical MAC protocols are designed to save power by placing the radio in the low-power sleep mode. In this paper a new energy-efficient multi-layer MAC (ML-MAC) protocol is proposed for wireless sensor networks. It is designed with two main features: low duty cycle and low number of collisions. Sensor nodes in ML-MAC have a very short listening time which would reduce the energy required to communicate with other nodes. Also, the number of collisions in cases where two or more nodes try to send at the same time is minimized in ML-MAC. This saves the energy required to re-send the corrupted packets. Simulation results show much better performance of the energy consumption compared with the existing MAC protocols.