WA-MAC: A weather adaptive MAC protocol in survivability-heterogeneous wireless sensor networks

Nowadays, sensor nodes are deployed to different environments to perform applications. Harsh environments such as rain or snow could damage the sensor nodes permanently. In this paper, a novel survivability-heterogeneous wireless sensor network composed of sensor nodes that is resistant to environmental detriments is designed. We for the first time study the medium access control protocol in such heterogeneous wireless sensor networks for data transmission under different weather conditions. We present a new Weather Adaptive receiver-initiated MAC protocol, called WA-MAC. WA-MAC can largely reduce idle listening time to save energy consumption for sensors during data transmission and provide a relative delay bound data delivery service by establishing appropriate rendezvous time between senders and receivers. Besides, by adopting weather forecast information, WA-MAC adjusts the data transmission process between different types of sensors to avoid packets being lost or delayed. Simulation results in ns-2 simulator show that WA-MAC can achieve the required relative delay bound, a low duty cycle and a high packet delivery ratio in the network, which outperforms other existing MAC protocols.