WUR-MAC: Energy efficient Wakeup Receiver based MAC Protocol

This paper discusses WUR-MAC, a medium-access control (MAC) protocol suited for wireless nodes equipped with a Wakeup Receiver (WUR). Unlike other protocols, the WUR-MAC takes advantage of the WUR ultra-low power listening mode leaving it permanently active to wait for incoming requests. Due to the ultra low power nature of these radio receivers, energy consumption and latency can be optimized at the same time. Energy consumption of the combined physical and MAC layer of a WUR based design is compared to efficient schedule based low power MAC protocols using the same main underlying transceiver without a wakeup radio receiver. WUR-MAC is based on proven MAC concepts but avoids complicated algorithms that are needed to synchronize nodes in traditional WSNs. Simulation results show that with typically low traffic, the average power consumption of schedule-based MACs is significantly higher than by using WUR-MAC only in the case where very low power Wakeup Receivers (<40 μW always on) are used. Delay is improved in any case due to the always on nature of the Wakeup Receiver.