Hybrid MAC Protocol Design for Mobile Wireless Sensors Networks

Abstract

With the rapid proliferation of mobile wireless sensors networks (WSNs), which are widely deployed in the Internet of things, the Internet of vehicles, and flying ad hoc networks, more and more researchers are making the effort to improve energy efficiency and throughput of WSNs. In recent years, many protocols have been proposed to solve the energy shortage problem. Some of the protocols are based on cooperative or allocation schemes, some are based on contending schemes, and others are based on the foundation of hybrid schemes. However, it is still difficult to improve the energy efficiency and networks throughput simultaneously. In this article, we present a novel carrier sense multiple access/collision avoidance and time division multiple access hybrid scheme protocol medium access control (MAC) on the MAC layer to improve the throughput and reduce energy consumption at the same time for mobile WSN with position prediction algorithms in 3-D space. Compared to existing protocols, the proposed protocol can efficiently reduce the energy consumption and significantly improve the throughput, especially for high-speed mobile WSN in the many-to-one communication paradigm. Extensive simulation results prove the performance of the protocol.