Energy-Efficient and Scalable S-MAC Protocol for Wireless Sensor Networks

1. S-MAC Taekyoung Kwon

2. MAC in sensor network • Energy-efficient • Scalable • Size, density, topology change • Fairness • Latency • Throughput/utilization

3. Energy wastage • Collision • Overhearing • Promiscuous mode • Idle listening • Control packets

4. Counter-attack • Collision  RTS and CTS • Overhearing  switching the radio off when the transmission is not meant for that node • Control overhead  message passing • Fairness issue • Idle listening  periodic listen and sleep

5. S-MAC features • Periodic listen and sleep • Collision and Overhearing avoidance • Message passing

6. Periodic listen and sleep • If no sensing event happens, nodes are idle for a long time, so it is not necessary to keep the nodes listening all the time • To reduce control overhead, neighboring nodes are synchronized (i.e. Listen and sleep together) Listen Listen Sleep Sleep time • Not all neighboring nodes can synchronize together • Two neighboring nodes (B and C) can have different schedules if they are required to synchronize with different node A B C D

7. Listen/sleep schedule • Each node maintains a schedule table that stores schedules of all its known neighbors. • To establish the initial schedule (at the startup) following steps are followed: • A node first listens for a certain amount of time. • If it does not hear a schedule from another node, it randomly chooses a schedule and broadcast its schedule immediately. • This node is called a SYNCHRONIZER

8. Schedule (cont’d) • If a node receives a schedule from a neighbor before choosing its own schedule, it just follows this neighbor’s schedule • This node is called a FOLLOWER and it waits for a random delay and broadcasts its schedule • If a node receives a neighbor’s schedule after it selects its own schedule, it adopts to both schedules and broadcasts its own schedule before going to sleep

9. Overall schedule • Listen (sync and RTS) + sleep

10. Collision avoidance • Similar to IEEE802.11 using RTS/CTS mechanism • Perform carrier sense before initiating a transmission • If a node fails to get the medium, it goes to sleep and wakes up when the receiver is free and listening again • Broadcast packets are sent without RTS/CTS • Unicast packets follow the sequence of RTS/CTS/DATA/ACK between the sender and receiver

11. Overhearing avoidance • Duration field in each transmitted packet indicates how long the remaining transmission will be. • The node records this value in network allocation vector (NAV) and set a timer. • If NAV is not zero, then medium is busy (virtual carrier sense). • Medium is determined as free if both virtual and physical carrier sense indicate the medium is free. • All immediate neighbors of both the sender and receiver should sleep

12. Message passing • A message is a collection of meaningful, interrelated units of data • Transmitting a long message as a packet is disadvantageous as the re-transmission cost is high • Fragmentation into small packets will lead to high control overhead as each packet should contend using RTS/CTS • Solution • Fragment message in to small packets and transmit them as a burst (ACK for each fragment) Shifted by the reXmission # reXmit S-MAC : time Reserved time

13. T-MAC • Adaptive duty cycle • Active period ends when no activation event for the time TA • Periodic frame timer expires • Reception of any data • Sensing of communication • End of transmission of data or ACK • Knowledge that data exchange of a neighbor has ended

14. Determining TA • C: length of the contention interval • R: length of the RTS • T: turnaround time (similar to SIFS) • TA > C + R + T

15. Early sleeping problem • How to address this problem?

16. Future RTS (FRTS) • DS : a small Data-Send packet

17. Priority on buffers • When a node’s transmit buffers are almost full, it may prefer sending to receiving