18CSE451T - Wireless Sensor

Networks

Unit – III
Syllabus

Overview-Wireless Mac Protocols -Characteristics of MAC

protocols in Sensor networks -Contention free MAC Protocols -
MAC Protocols -Characteristics -Traffic Adaptive Medium Access -
Y-MAC -Low energy Adaptive Clustering - Contention based MAC
Protocols , Sensor MAC ,Timeout MAC and pattern MAC
MAC protocols in ContikiOS simulator ,Nullmac in Contiki
simulator ,CSMA in Contiki simulator
Roadmap
 Overview
 Wireless MAC protocols
 Carrier Sense Multiple Access
 Multiple Access with Collision Avoidance (MACA) and MACAW
 MACA By Invitation
 IEEE 802.11
 IEEE 802.15.4 and ZigBee
 Characteristics of MAC Protocols in Sensor Networks
 Energy Efficiency
 Scalability
 Adaptability
 Low Latency and Predictability
 Reliability
 Contention-Free MAC Protocols
 Contention-Based MAC Protocols
 Hybrid MAC Protocols

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 Medium Access Control
 In most networks, multiple nodes share a communication medium for
transmitting their data packets
 The medium access control (MAC) protocol is primarily responsible for
regulating access to the shared medium
 The choice of MAC protocol has a direct bearing on the reliability and
efficiency of network transmissions
 due to errors and interferences in wireless communications and to
other challenges
 Energy efficiency also affects the design of the MAC protocol
 trade energy efficiency for increased latency or a reduction in
throughput or fairness

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 Overview
 Responsibilities of MAC layer include:
 decide when a node accesses a shared medium
 resolve any potential conflicts between competing nodes
 correct communication errors occurring at the physical layer
 perform other activities such as framing, addressing, and flow control
 Second layer of the OSI reference model (data link layer) or the IEEE 802
reference model (which divides data link layer into logical link control and
medium access control layer)

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MAC Protocol Categorization

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 Contention-Free Medium Access
 Collisions can be avoided by ensuring that each node can use its allocated
resources exclusively
 Examples of fixed assignment strategies:
 FDMA: Frequency Division Multiple Access
the frequency band is divided into several smaller frequency bands
the data transfer between a pair of nodes uses one frequency
band
all other nodes use a different frequency band
 TDMA: Time Division Multiple Access
multiple devices to use the same frequency band
relies on periodic time windows (frames)
– frames consist of a fixed number of transmission slots to
separate the medium accesses of different devices
– a time schedule indicates which node may transmit data during a
certain slot
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 Contention-Free Medium Access
 Examples of fixed assignment strategies (contd.):
 CDMA: Code Division Multiple Access
simultaneous accesses of the wireless medium are supported using
different codes
if these codes are orthogonal, it is possible for multiple
communications to share the same frequency band
forward error correction (FEC) at the receiver is used to recover from
interferences among these simultaneous communications
 Fixed assignment strategies are inefficient
 it is impossible to reallocate slots belonging to one device to other
devices if not needed in every frame
generating schedules for an entire network can be a taunting
task
these schedules may require modifications every time the network
topology or traffic characteristics in the network change

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 Contention-Free Medium Access
 Dynamic assignment strategies: allow nodes to access the medium on demand
 polling-based protocols
 a controller device issues small polling frames in a round-robin fashion,
asking each station if it has data to send
 if no data to be sent, the controller polls the next station
 token passing
 stations pass a polling request to each other (round-robin fashion) using a
special frame called a token
 a station is allowed to transmit data only when it holds the token
 reservation-based protocols
 static time slots used to reserve future access to the medium
 e.g., a node can indicate its desire to transmit data by toggling a reservation
bit in a fixed location
 these often very complex protocols then ensure that other potentially
conflicting nodes take note of such a reservation to avoid collisions

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 Contention-Based Medium Access
 Nodes may initiate transmissions at the same time
 requires mechanisms to reduce the number of collisions and to recover
from collisions
 Example 1: ALOHA protocol
 uses acknowledgments to confirm the success of a broadcast data
transmission
allows nodes to access the medium immediately
addresses collisions with approaches such as exponential back-off
to increase the likelihood of successful transmissions
 Example 2: slotted-ALOHA protocol
 requires that a station may commence transmission only at predefined
points in time (the beginning of a time slot)
 increases the efficiency of ALOHA
 introduces the need for synchronization among nodes

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 Contention-Based Medium Access
 Carrier Sense Multiple Access (CSMA)
 CSMA with Collision Detection (CSMA/CD)
sender first senses the medium to determine whether it is idle or
busy
– if it is found busy, the sender refrains from transmitting
packets
– if the medium is idle, the sender can initiate data
transmission
 CSMA with Collision Avoidance (CSMA/CA)
CSMA/CD requires that sender aware of collisions
instead, CSMA/CA attempts to avoid collisions in the first place

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 Hidden and Exposed Terminal Problems
 Hidden-terminal problem
 senders A and C are able to reach B, but cannot overhear each otherʼs
signals
 it is possible for A and C to transmit data to B at the same time, causing
a collision at B, without being able to directly detect this collision
 Exposed-terminal problem
 C wants to transmit data D, but decides to wait because it overhears an
ongoing transmission from B to A
 Bsʼ transmission could not interfere with data reception at C

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 Carrier Sense Multiple Access
 Nodes first sense the medium before they begin a transmission (reduces
number of collisions)
 Non-persistent CSMA
 node is allowed to immediately transmit data once medium is idle
 if the medium is busy, the node performs a back-off operation
wait for a certain amount of time before attempting to transmit
again
 1-persistent CSMA
 node wishing to transmit data continuously senses the medium for
activity
 once the medium is found idle, the node transmits data
immediately
 if a collision occurs, the node waits for a random period of time before
attempting to transmit again

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 Carrier Sense Multiple Access
 p-persistent CSMA
 node continuously senses the medium
 node transmits data with a probability p once the medium becomes idle
 delays transmission with a probability 1 − p
 random back-off values are either continuous values in the case of un-
slotted CSMA or multiples of a fixed slot size in slotted CSMA
 CSMA/CA (CSMA with Collision Avoidance)
 nodes sense the medium, but do not immediately access the channel
when it is found idle
 instead, a node waits for a time period called DCF interframe space
(DIFS) plus a multiple of a slot size
 in case there are multiple nodes attempting to access the medium, the
one with the shorter back-off period will win

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 Carrier Sense Multiple Access
 Example:
 node A waits for DIFS + 4 ∗ s (where s represents the slot size), while
node Bʼ back-off is DIFS + 7 ∗ s
 once node A begins with its transmission, node B freezes its own back-
off timer and resumes the timer after node A completes its transmission
plus another period of DIFS
 once node Bsʼ Back-off timer expires, it can also begin its transmission

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 MACA and MACAW
 Multiple Access with Collision Avoidance (MACA)
 dynamic reservation mechanism
 sender indicates desire to send with ready-to-send (RTS) packet
 intended receiver responds with clear-to-send (CTS) packet
 if sender does not receive CTS, it will retry at later point in time
 nodes overhearing RTS or CTS know that reservation has taken place
and must wait (e.g., based on the size of data transmission)
 address hidden terminal problem and reduces number of collisions
 MACA for Wireless LANs (MACAW)
 receiver responds with acknowledgment (ACK) after data reception
other nodes in receiverʼs range learn that channel is available
 nodes hearing RTS, but not CTS do not know if transmission will
occur
MACAW uses data sending (DS) packet, sent by sender after
receiving CTS to inform such nodes of successful
handshake 15
 MACA By Invitation
 In MACA-BI, destination device initiates data transfers by sending a Ready
To Receive (RTR) packet to the source
 source then responds with the data message
 Compared to MACA, MACA-BI reduces overhead
 increases the theoretical maximum throughput
 depends on the destination knowing when to
receive data
 Source nodes can use an optional field within the data message to indicate
the number of queued messages
 providing the destination with an indication that more RTS packets will
be required

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 IEEE 802.11
 Published in 1999 by the Institute of Electrical and Electronics Engineers
(IEEE)
 specifies the physical and data link layers of the OSI model for wireless
connections
 Often referred to as Wireless Fidelity (Wi-Fi)
 certification given by Wi-Fi Alliance, a group that ensures compatibility
between hardware devices that use the 802.11 standard
 Wi-Fi combines concepts found in CSMA/CA and MACAW, but also offers
features to preserve energy
 Two modes of operation
 Point Coordination Function (PCF) mode
communication among devices goes through a central entity called
an access point (AP) or base station (BS): managed mode
 Distributed Coordination Function (DCF) mode
devices communicate directly with each other: ad-hoc mode
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 IEEE 802.11
 IEEE 802.11 is based on CSMA/CA
 before a node transmits, it first senses the medium for activity
 the node is allowed to transmit, if the medium is idle for at least a time
period called the DCF interframe space (DIFS)
 otherwise the device executes a back-off algorithm to defer
transmission to a later time
 this algorithm randomly selects a number of time slots to wait and stores
this value in a back-off counter
 for every time slot that passes without activity on the network, the
counter is decremented and the device can attempt transmission
when this counter reaches zero
 if activity is detected before the counter reaches zero, the device waits
until the channel has been idle for a period of DIFS before it continues
to decrement the counter value

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 IEEE 802.11
 After a successful transmission
 receiver device responds with an acknowledgment after waiting for a
time period called the short interframe space (SIFS)
 the value of SIFS is smaller than the value of DIFS to ensure that no
other device accesses the channel before the receiver can transmit its
acknowledgment
 Once a node A makes a reservation using RTS and CTS control
messages
 another neighboring node B, overhearing the RTS message, must
refrain from accessing the medium until node Asʼ transmission has been
completed and acknowledged
 however, this would mean that node B has to continuously sense the
medium to detect when it becomes idle again

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 IEEE 802.11
 Instead, Asʼ RTS message carries the size of the data it will transmit
 allowing node B to estimate how long the transmission will take and to
decide whether to enter a low-power sleep mode
 some neighboring nodes may only overhear CTS (but not RTS),
therefore, the data size is also carried in the CTS message
 using the data size information, neighboring nodes set a network
allocation vector (NAV) that indicates how long the medium will be
unavailable
reduces the need for continuously sensing the medium, allowing
a node to save power

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IEEE 802.11

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 IEEE 802.11
 PCF mode
 access point (AP) coordinates channel access to ensure collision-free
communication
periodically broadcasts a beacon to its client devices (includes list of
devices with data pending at AP)
 during contention-free period, AP transmits these packets to its client
devices
 AP can also poll client devices to allow them to initiate data transfers
 AP uses a wait period called the PCF interframe space (PIFS)
PIFS is shorter than DIFS, but longer than SIFS
ensures that PCF traffic has priority over traffic generated by devices
operating in the DCF mode, without interfering with control
messages in the DCF mode such as CTS and ACK

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 IEEE 802.11
 Focus of IEEE 802.11 is on providing fair access to the medium with
support for high throughput and mobility
 since devices spend a large amount of time listening to the medium and
collisions occur frequently, this standard incurs large overheads,
including significant energy costs
 Energy consumption problem
 IEEE 802.11 offers a power saving mode (PSM) for devices operating in
the PCF mode
 devices can inform the AP that they wish to enter a low-power sleep
mode using special control messages
 these devices wake up periodically to receive beacon messages from
the AP to determine if they should stay awake to receive incoming
messages
 saves energy, but only works in the infrastructure mode and it is not
specified when or how long devices should sleep

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 IEEE 802.15.4
 IEEE 802.15.4
 created for low-power devices in the 868 MHz, 915 MHz, and 2.45 GHz
frequency bands
 supports two transmission modes:
UWB PHY
– bit rates: 110 kbps, 851 kbps (nominal), 6.81 kbps, and 27.24
Mbps
CSS PHY
– bit rates: 1 Mbps (nominal) and 250 kbps

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 ZigBee
 Before 802.15.4, ZigBee Alliance worked on low-cost communication technology for
low data rates and low power consumption
 IEEE and ZigBee Alliance joined forces and ZigBee has become the commercial
name for the IEEE 802.15.4 technology
 Star mode:
 communication via the Personal Area Network (PAN) coordinator
 synchronized mode (beacon-enabled)
 PAN coordinator periodically broadcasts beacons for synchronization and
management
 slotted channel access: device performs random backoff before channel is
sensed
– if no activity, node waits until next slot and senses channel again until no
activity has been detected for two consecutive slots
– if activity, backoff procedure is repeated
 unsynchronized mode: device access channel immediately when no activity is
detected during the first initial backoff time

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 ZigBee
 Peer-to-peer mode:
 devices are free to communicate directly with each other
 but they still must associate with the PAN coordinator before they can
participate in peer-to-peer communication
 Data transfer between the device and its PAN coordinator is always initiated
by the device
 allows a device to determine when data is transferred and to maximize
its energy savings
when a device wants to send data to the PAN coordinator, it can use
the previously described channel access method
the PAN coordinator transmits data intended for a device only after
the device explicitly requested such a transmission
 in both cases, optional acknowledgments can be used to let the PAN
coordinator or device know that the transmission was successful

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 IEEE 802.15.4 and ZigBee
 Challenges:
 standard does not clearly define the operation of the peer-to-peer
approach
 in large WSNs, it is unlikely that all devices will be able to use the same
PAN coordinator
 standard does allow communication among PAN coordinators, but this
again is not well defined

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 Characteristics of MAC Protocols in WSNs

 Most MAC protocols are built for fairness

 everybody should get an equal amount of resources
 no one should receive special treatment
 In a WSN, all nodes cooperate to achieve a common purpose, therefore
fairness is less of a concern
 Instead, wireless nodes are mostly concerned with energy consumption
 Sensing applications may value low latency or high reliability over
fairness

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 Energy Efficiency
 Sensor nodes must operate using finite energy sources, therefore MAC
protocols must consider energy efficiency
 Common technique: dynamic power management (DPM)
 a resource can be moved between different operational modes such as
active, idle, and asleep
 for resources such as the network, the active mode can group together
multiple different modes of activity, e.g., transmitting and receiving
 Periodic traffic models are very common in WSNs
 significant energy savings can be obtained by putting a device into a
low-power sleep mode
 fraction of time a sensor nodes spends in active mode is called the duty
cycle
often very small due to the infrequent and brief data
transmissions occurring in most sensor networks

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 Energy Efficiency

RFM TR1000 RFM TR3000 MC13202 CC1000 CC2420

Data rate (kbps) 115.2 115.2 250 76.8 250

Transmit current 12mA 7.5mA 35mA 16.5mA 17.4mA
Receive current 3.8mA 3.8mA 42mA 9.6mA 18.8mA
Idle current 3.8mA 3.8mA 800μA 9.6mA 18.8mA
Standby current 0.7μA 0.7μA 102μA 96μA 426μA

Characteristics of typical radios used by state-of-the-art sensor nodes

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 Energy Efficiency
 Reasons for energy inefficiency
 idle listening
 inefficient protocol designs (e.g., large packet headers)
 reliability features (collisions requiring retransmissions or other error
control mechanisms)
 control messages to address the hidden-terminal problem
 choice of modulation scheme
 choice of transmission rate
 overemitting

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 Scalability
 Many wireless MAC protocols have been designed for use in infrastructure-
based networks
 access points or controller nodes arbitrate access to the channel and
perform some centralized coordination and management functions
 Most wireless sensor networks rely on multi-hop and peer-to-peer
communications without centralized coordinators
 MAC protocols must be able to allow for efficient use of resources without
incurring unacceptable overheads, particularly in very large networks
 MAC protocols based on CDMA have to cache a large number of code
(may be impractical for resource-constrained sensor devices)
 WSNs are not only constrained in their energy resources, but also in their
processing and memory capacities
 Therefore, MAC protocols should not impose excessive computational
burden should not require too much memory to save state information

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 Adaptability
 A key characteristic of a WSN is its ability to self-manage
 adapt to changes in the network
 including changes in topology, network size, density, and traffic
characteristics
 A MAC protocol for a WSN should be able to gracefully adapt to such
changes without significant overheads
 This requirement generally favors protocols that are dynamic in
nature
 protocols that make medium access decisions based on current
demand and network state
 Protocols with fixed assignments (e.g., TDMA with fixed-size frames and
slots) may incur large overheads due to adaptations of such
assignments that may affect many or all nodes in the network

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 Low Latency and Predictability
 Many WSN applications have timeliness requirements
 sensor data must be collected, aggregated, and delivered within certain
latency constraints or deadlines
 example: wildfire detection (sensor data must be delivered to monitoring
stations in a timely fashion to ensure timely responses)
 MAC protocol design
 choice of frame size and slot allocations in TDMA-based protocols may
lead to large delays
 in contention-based protocols, nodes may be able to access the
wireless medium sooner (than TDMA), but collisions and the resulting
retransmissions incur delays
 choice of MAC protocol can affect how predictable the experienced
delay is (expressed as upper latency bounds)
 some contention-based MAC protocols allow the theoretical possibility
of starvation

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 Reliability
 Common requirement for WSNs
 MAC protocol design affects reliability
 responsible for detecting and recovering from transmission errors and
collisions

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 Contention-Free MAC Protocols
 Concept:
 allow only one sensor node to access the channel at any given time
 thereby avoiding collisions and message retransmissions
 assuming a perfect medium and environment
i.e., no other competing networks or misbehaving devices exist that
could otherwise cause collisions or even jam a channel
 Contention-free protocols allocate resources to individual nodes to ensure
exclusive resource access by only one node at any given time
 Exposes a number of desirable characteristics
 node knows exactly when it has to turn on its radio
 during all other times, radio can be turned off to preserve energy
 fixed slot allocations impose upper bounds on delay
 difficult to design schedules for large networks
 difficult to handle changes in topology, density, traffic load

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 Traffic-Adaptive Medium Access
 TRAMA is an example of a contention-free MAC protocol with the goal to
increase network throughput and energy efficiency (compared to TDMA)
 It uses a distributed election scheme to determine when nodes are allowed
to transmit
 based on information about the traffic at each node
 avoids assigning slots to nodes with no traffic to send (increased
throughput)
 allows nodes to determine when they can become idle and do not have
to listen to the channel (increased energy efficiency)

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 Traffic-Adaptive Medium Access
 TRAMA assumes a time-slotted channel, where time is dived into:
 periodic random-access intervals (signaling slots)
 scheduled-access intervals (transmission slots)
 Random-access intervals
 Neighbor Protocol (NP) is used to propagate one-hop neighbor
information among neighboring nodes
nodes join a network by transmitting during a randomly
selected slot
packets transmitted during these slots are used to gather
neighborhood information by carrying a set of added and
deleted neighbors
in case no changes have occurred, these packets serve as
“keep- alive” beacons
 NP allows nodes to obtain consistent two-hop topology information

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 Traffic-Adaptive Medium Access
 Random-access intervals (contd.)
 Schedule Exchange Protocol (SEP) establishes and broadcasts actual
schedules (i.e., allocations of slots to a node)
each node computes a duration SCHEDULE_INTERVAL
– represents the number of slots for which the node can
announce its schedule to its neighbors
– this duration depends on the rate at which the nodeʼs
applications can produce packets
at time t, the node then computes the number of slots within [t, t+
SCHEDULE_INTERVAL] for which it has the highest priority among
its two-hop neighbors
the node announces the selected slots and the intended
receivers using a schedule packet
the last slot in this schedule is used to announce the next
schedule for the next interval

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 Traffic-Adaptive Medium Access
 Random-access intervals (contd.)
 Schedule Exchange Protocol (SEP) (contd.)
example:
– a nodeʼs SCHEDULE_INTERVAL is 100 slots
– the current time (slot number) is 1000
– a possible slot selection for interval [1000, 1100] for this node
could be 1011, 1021, 1049, 1050, and 1093
– during slot 1093, the node broadcasts its new schedule
for interval [1093, 1193]
list of intended receivers in the schedule packet is implemented as
a bitmap
– length of a bitmap is equal to the number of one-hop neighbors
» each bit in the bitmap corresponds to one particular receiver
ordered by its identities
» every node can determine the receiver address based on the
bitmap and its list of neighbors
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 Traffic-Adaptive Medium Access
 Random-access intervals (contd.)
 Schedule Exchange Protocol (SEP) (contd.)
slot selection is based on the nodeʼs priority at time t
– uses a pseudo-random hash of the concatenation of the nodeʼs
identity i and t:

– node can indicate which slots it gives up, allowing other nodes
to claim these unused slots
a node can determine its state for any given time slot t based on its
two-hop neighborhood information and the announced schedules
– node i is in the transmit (TX) state if it has the highest priority and
if it has data to send
– node i is in the receive (RX) state if it is the intended receiver of
the transmitter during slot t
– otherwise, the node can be switched into the sleep (SL) state
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 Traffic-Adaptive Medium Access
 Summary
 compared to CSMA-based protocols
reduces the probability of collisions
increases the sleep time and energy savings
 unlike standard TDMA approaches
TRAMA divides time into random-access and scheduled-access
intervals
during the random-access intervals
– nodes are awake to either transmit or receive topology
information
– the length of the random-access interval affects the overall duty
cycle and achievable energy savings of a node

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 Y-MAC
 Y-MAC uses TDMA-based medium access but for multiple channels
 Divides time into frames and slots
 each frame contains a broadcast period and a unicast period
 every node must wake up at the beginning of a broadcast period
 nodes contend for access to the medium during this period
if there are no incoming broadcast messages, each node turns off
its radio awaiting its first assigned slot in the unicast period
each slot in the unicast period is assigned to only one node
for receiving data
 Y-MAC uses a receiver-driven model
 can be more energy-efficient under light traffic conditions, because each
node samples the medium only in its own receive time slots
 particularly important for radio transceivers, where the energy costs for
receiving are greater than for transmitting (e.g., due to sophisticated
despreading and error correction techniques)
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 Y-MAC
 Medium access in Y-MAC is based on synchronous low power listening
 The contention window (at beginning of each slot) resolves contention
between multiple senders
 a node wishing to send data sets a random wait time (back-off value)
within the contention window
 after this wait time, the node wakes up and senses the medium for
activity for a certain amount of time
if the medium is free, the node sends a preamble until the end of the
contention window to suppress competing transmissions and the
receiver wakes up at the end of the contention window to wait for
packets in its assigned slot
if the medium receives no signal from any of its neighboring nodes, it
turns off the radio and returns to the sleep mode

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 Y-MAC
 Unicast period
 messages are initially exchanged on the base channel
 at the beginning of its receive slot
a receiver switches its frequency to the base channel
the node that won the medium in the contention window also
uses the base channel to transmit its packet
the receiver acknowledges this packet (if the acknowledgment
request flag was set in the packet)
 Broadcast period
 every node tunes to the base channel
 the potential senders take part in the contention process described
above

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 Y-MAC
 Every node polls the medium only during broadcast time slots and its own
unicast receive time slots
 makes this approach energy-efficient
 however, under heavy traffic conditions, many unicast messages may
have to wait in the message queue or are dropped due to the limited
bandwidth reserved for the receiving node
 as a consequence, Y-MAC uses a channel hopping mechanism to
reduce packet delivery latency

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 Y-MAC
 After receiving a packet during its time slot on the base channel, the
receiving node hops to the next channel and sends a notification
 it can continue to receive packets on the second channel
 contention for the medium in the second channel is resolved as
before
 At the end of this slot, the receiving node can decide to hop again to
another channel
 until reaching the last channel or
 until no more data is being received
 The hopping sequence generation algorithm
 determines the actual hopping sequence among the available
channels
 should guarantee that there is only one receiver among one-hop
neighbors on any particular channel

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 Y-MAC
 Summary
 Y-MAC uses slot assignments (such as TDMA)
 communication is receiver-driven to ensure low-energy consumption
i.e., a receiver briefly samples the medium during its slot and returns
to the sleep mode if no packets arrive
 uses multiple channels
to increase the achievable throughput
to reduce delivery latency
 main drawbacks of the Y-MAC approach:
has the same flexibility and scalability issues as TDMA (i.e., fixed
slot allocations)
requires sensor nodes with multiple radio channels

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Low-Energy Adaptive Clustering Hierarchy
 The LEACH protocol combines TDMA-style contention-free communication
with a clustering algorithm for wireless sensor networks
 a cluster consists of a single cluster head and any number of cluster
members, which only communicate with their cluster head
 clustering is a popular approach for sensor networks
facilitates data aggregation and in-network processing at the cluster
head
reduces the amount of data that needs to be transmitted to the
base station
 LEACH operates in rounds consisting of two phases:
 A setup phase phase
 A steady-state phase

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Low-Energy Adaptive Clustering Hierarchy
 Setup phase
 cluster heads are determined and communication schedules within
each cluster are established
 since the cluster head is responsible for coordinating cluster activity and
forwarding data to the base station, its energy requirements will be
significantly larger compared to other sensor nodes
 therefore, LEACH rotates the cluster head responsibility among sensor
nodes to evenly distribute the energy load
every sensor i elects itself to be a cluster head with a certain
probability Pi(t)
In a network with N nodes and a desired number of cluster
heads of
k, the probabilities can be chosen to satisfy:

57
Low-Energy Adaptive Clustering Hierarchy
 There are various approaches to choose Pi (t), e.g.,:

 This approach uses an indicator function Ci (t) to determine whether node i

has been a cluster head in the r mod(N/k) previous rounds
 Only nodes that have not been cluster heads recently are candidates for the
cluster head role, in order to evenly distribute the cluster head responsibility
(and energy overhead) among all nodes

58
Low-Energy Adaptive Clustering Hierarchy
 This approach does not consider the actual amount of energy available to
each node
 An alternative approach to determining the probability of becoming a cluster
head can be used:

 Ei(t) is node iʼs actual current energy and Etotal(t) is the sum of the energy
levels of all nodes
 a disadvantage of this approach is that every node must know (or
estimate) Etotal(t)

59
Low-Energy Adaptive Clustering Hierarchy
 Once a sensor node has determined that it will serve as cluster head for the
next round, it informs other sensor nodes of its new role by broadcasting an
advertisement message (ADV) using a non-persistent CSMA protocol
 Every sensor node joins a cluster by selecting the cluster head that can be
reached with the smallest amount of transmit energy, based on received
signal strength of the ADV messages from the cluster heads
 Joining is achieved by transmitting a join-request (Join-REQ) message to
the chosen cluster head using CSMA
 The cluster head establishes a transmission schedule for its cluster and
transmits this schedule to each node in its cluster

60
Low-Energy Adaptive Clustering Hierarchy
 Steady-state phase
 a sensor node communicates only with the cluster head
it is allowed to transmit data only during its allocated slots (indicated
by the schedule received from the cluster head)
 the responsibility of the cluster head is to forward sensor data
originating at one of its sensor nodes to the base station
 in order to preserve energy:
each cluster member uses the minimum required transmit power to
reach the cluster head
each cluster member turns off the wireless radio between its
designated slots
 the cluster head remains awake at all times
to receive sensor data from its cluster members
to communicate with the base station

61
Low-Energy Adaptive Clustering Hierarchy
 Sensor nodes use the direct sequence spread spectrum (DSSS) technique
to limit the interference among clusters, while intra-cluster communication is
contention-free using TDMA-style frames and slots
 Communication occurring in one cluster can still interfere with
communication in another cluster
 Each cluster uses a spreading sequence that is different from the spreading
sequences used in neighboring clusters
 Another reserved sequence is used for communication between cluster
heads and the base station
 Communication between cluster heads and base station is based on
CSMA
 Before a cluster head transmits data, it first senses the channel to see if
there is an ongoing transmission using the same spreading code

62
Low-Energy Adaptive Clustering Hierarchy
 LEACH-C
 variation of LEACH protocol
 relies on the base station to determine the cluster heads
during setup phase, each sensor node transmits its location
and energy levels to the base station
based on this information, the base station determines the
cluster heads and informs the cluster heads of their new role
other sensor nodes can then join clusters using join messages as
described in the original LEACH protocol

63
Low-Energy Adaptive Clustering Hierarchy
 Summary
 LEACH relies on a variety of techniques to reduce energy consumption
minimum transmit energy
avoiding idle listening of cluster members
 LEACH attempts to obtain contention-free communication
schedule-based communication
DSSS
 intra-cluster communication is contention-free and interferences among
clusters are avoided
 communication between the cluster heads and the base station is still
based on CSMA
 assumes that all nodes are able to reach the base station (affects the
scalability of this protocol; can be addressed using multi-hop routing or
by implementing a hierarchical clustering approach)

64
 Contention-Based MAC Protocols
 These protocols do not rely on transmission schedules, instead they require
other mechanisms to resolve contention when it occurs
 The main advantage of contention-based techniques is their simplicity
compared to most schedule-based techniques
 schedule-based MAC protocols must save and maintain schedules or
tables indicating the transmission order
 most contention-based protocols do not require to save, maintain, or
share state information
 this also allows contention-based protocols to adapt quickly to changes
in network topologies or traffic characteristics
 However, they typically result in higher collision rates and overheads due to
idle listening and overhearing (overheads usually refer to additional bits in
a packet or additional packets such as control packets)
 They may also suffer from fairness issues (i.e., some nodes may be able to
obtain more frequent channel accesses than others)

70
 Sensor MAC
 The goal of the S-MAC protocol is
 to reduce unnecessary energy consumption
 while providing good scalability and collision avoidance mechanism
 S-MAC adopts a duty-cycle approach
 nodes periodically transition between a listen state and a sleep state
 each node chooses its own schedule, although it is preferred when
nodes synchronize their schedules such that nodes listen or sleep at
the same time
 nodes using the same schedule are considered to belong to the same
virtual cluster (but no real clustering takes place)
all nodes are free to communicate with nodes outside their
clusters

75
 Sensor MAC
 All nodes are free to communicate with nodes outside their clusters
 Nodes periodically exchange their schedules with their neighbors using
SYNC messages (every node knows when any of its neighbors will be
awake)
 If node A wants to communicate with a neighbor B that uses a different
schedule, A simply waits until B is listening and then initiates the data
transfer
 contention for the medium is resolved using the RTS/CTS scheme
 In order to choose a schedule, a node initially listens to the medium for
a certain amount of time
 if this node receives a schedule from a neighbor, it chooses this
schedule as its own and this node becomes a follower
 the node broadcasts its new schedule after a random delay td to
minimize the possibility for collisions from multiple new followers

76
 Sensor MAC
 Nodes can adopt multiple schedules if a node receives a different schedule
after it has broadcast its own schedule
 it then adopts both schedules
 If a node does not hear a schedule from another node
 it determines its own schedule
 broadcasts this schedule to any potential neighbors
 and this node becomes a synchronizer (in that other nodes will begin to
synchronize themselves with it)

77
 Sensor MAC
 S-MAC divides a nodeʼs listen interval further into
 a part for receiving SYNC packets
 a part for receiving RTS messages
 Each part is further divided into small slots to facilitate carrier sensing

78
 Sensor MAC
 A node trying to send a SYNC or RTS message randomly selects a time
slot within the SYNC or RTS part of the interval, respectively
 senses the carrier for activity from when the receiver begins listening to
the selected slot
 if no activity has been detected, it wins the medium and begins
transmission
 Contention for the medium is addressed using collision avoidance based on
RTS/CTS handshakes (S-MAC adopts a contention-based approach)
 when a node hears an RTS or CTS and concludes that it cannot
transmit or receive at the same time, it can go to sleep to avoid
wasting energy caused by overhearing

79
 Sensor MAC
 Summary
 S-MAC is a contention-based protocol
 utilizes the sleep mode of wireless radios to trade energy for throughput
and latency
 collision avoidance is based on RTS/CTS (which is not used by
broadcast packets, thereby increasing the collision probability)
 duty cycle parameters (sleep and listen periods) are decided
beforehand and may be inefficient for the actual traffic characteristics in
the network

80
 Timeout MAC
 If there is only little traffic, S-MAC can actually waste energy because the
listening period of S-MAC is of fixed duration
 On the other hand, if traffic is heavy, the fixed duration may not be large
enough
 Therefore, the T-MAC protocol is a variation of S-MAC that uses an active
period that adapts to traffic density
 Nodes wake up during the beginning of a slot to listen very briefly for activity
and return to the sleep mode when no communication has been observed
 When a node transmits, receives, or overhears a message, it remains
awake for a brief period of time after completion of the message transfer
to see if more traffic can be observed
 this brief timeout interval allows a node to return to the sleep mode as
quickly as possible
 the end effect is that a nodeʼs awake times will increase with the heavier
traffic and will be very brief if traffic is light

81
 Timeout MAC
 To reduce potential collisions, each node waits for a random period of time
within a fixed contention interval before the medium is accessed

82
 Timeout MAC
 Once a node hears a CTS, it knows that another node won the medium
 This node then stays awake until the end of the transmission, which can be
observed by overhearing the acknowledgment (ACK) sent by node B
 This event initiates the beginning of the next contention interval and node C
will have an opportunity to transmit its data if it wins the medium

 In figure, assume that messages flow from top to bottom

 node A sends only to node B, node B sends to node C
 every time node C wants to send a message to node D, C must contend
for the medium
C may lose to node B (B may transmit an RTS before C does) or
C may lose to node A (C overhears a CTS transmitted by node B)
 while node C stays awake after overhearing node Bsʼ CTS message, its
intended receiver (node D) is not aware of Csʼ intention to transmit data
and therefore returns to the sleep mode after TA has expired
83
 Timeout MAC
 Early sleeping problem
 possible solution: future-request-to-send technique
a node with pending data can inform its intended receiver by
transmitting a future-request-to-send (FRTS) packet immediately
after overhearing a CTS message
node D, upon receiving the FRTS message, knows that node C will
attempt to send data to it and will therefore remain active
however, sending an FRTS message immediately after CTS could
interfere with node Bsʼ reception of node Asʼ data
therefore, Node A first sends a dummy message called Data-Send
(DS) to delay the transmission of the actual data
– DS has the same size as FRTS
– DS can collide with FRTS at node B, which is of no consequence
since it does not contain any useful information

84
 Timeout MAC
 Summary
 T-MACʼs adaptive approach allows it to adjust a nodeʼs sleep and
awake intervals based on the traffic load
 nodes send messages as bursts of variable length and sleep between
such bursts to conserve energy
 both S-MAC and T-MAC concentrate message exchanges to small
periods of time, resulting in inefficiencies under high traffic loads
 intended receivers are kept awake using messages that indicate future
transmissions, which can significantly increase the idle listening times
(and energy consumption) of nodes

85
 Pattern MAC
 The PMAC protocol is another example of a TDMA style protocol, but it
adapts its sleep schedules on the basis of its own traffic and the traffic
patterns of its neighbors
 Compared to S-MAC and T-MAC, PMAC further reduces energy costs of
idle listening by allowing devices to turn off their radios for long durations
during periods of inactivity

 Nodes use patterns to describe their tentative sleep and awake times
 a pattern is a string of bits, each bit representing a time slot
a node plans to sleep: bit is 0
a node plans to awake: bit is 1

86
 Pattern MAC
 While patterns are only tentative, schedules represent the actual sequence
of sleep and awake times
 format of a pattern is always 0m1 where m = 0, 1, . . . , N − 1 and N time
slots are considered to be a period (example: pattern 001 and N=6)
 value of m (number of leading zeros) is an indicator of traffic load
around the node
a small value indicates heavy traffic
a large value indicates light traffic
 every nodeʼs pattern during the first period is 1 (m=0), i.e., every node
assumes a heavy traffic load should be awake at all times

87
 Pattern MAC
 If a node does not have any data to send during the first slot, then it uses
this as an indicator that the traffic around it is potentially light (pattern
becomes 01)
 The node continues to double the sleep interval every time it has no data to
send (i.e., doubling the number of zeros; allowing it to sleep longer)
 This process is continued until a predefined threshold is reached, then the
number of zeros is increased linearly
 If there is no data for node i to send, the following sequence of patterns will
be generated:
1, 01, 021, 041, . . . , 0δ1, 0δ01, 0δ021, 0δ031, . . . , 0N−11
 Whenever a node has data to send, the pattern is immediately reset to 1,
allowing the node to wake up quickly and to handle the traffic load

88
 Pattern MAC
 While a pattern is only a tentative sleep plan, patterns are used to derive
actual sleep schedules
 A node broadcasts its own pattern at the end of a period during a time
interval called the Pattern Exchange Time Frame (PETF)
 the PETF is divided into a sequence of brief slots where the number of
slots is set to the maximum number of neighbors a node could have
 these slots are accessed using CSMA, i.e., collisions can occur
 If a node does not receive a pattern update from one of its neighbors, the
node simply assumes the neighborʼs pattern remains unchanged

89
 Pattern MAC
 Once a node has received the patterns from its neighbors, it determines its
own schedule, where each slot can be used for one of three possible
operations
1. if the neighbor has advertised a 1 for that slot, a node wakes up
and transmits a message to a neighbor
2. if a node has advertised a 1, but has no data to send, the slot is used
to listen
3. if none of these two conditions holds, the node sleeps

90
 Pattern MAC
 Summary
 PMAC provides a simple mechanism to build schedules that adapt to
the amount of traffic in a neighborhood
 when traffic loads are light, a node is able to spend considerable
amounts of time in the sleep mode, thereby preserving energy
 however, collisions during the PETF prevent nodes from receiving
pattern updates from all neighbors, while other nodes may have
received these updates
leads to inconsistent schedules among nodes in a
neighborhood, which can cause
– further collisions
– wasted transmissions
– unnecessary idle listening

91
 Summary
 The choice of a medium access protocol has a substantial impact on the
performance and energy-efficiency of a WSN
 MAC protocols should also be designed to accommodate changes in
network topology and traffic characteristics
 Latency, throughput, and fairness among competing nodes determined or
affected by the characteristics of the MAC layer

 Protocols based on transmission schedules

 collision-free
 resource-inefficient
 may require well synchronized nodes throughout the network
 difficult to adapt to changing topologies

127
 Summary
 Protocols that let nodes compete for access to the medium
 more flexible (easily accommodate changing network topologies)
 require less overhead
 not collision-free
 must possess features that allow them to recover from collisions
 network utilization may suffer when collisions occur frequently

128
 Introduction

 Several MAC duty-cycle protocols have been proposed during the last
decade
to
 address specific WSNs requirements and constraints such as a
 low energy consumption linked to battery operated nodes

 Radio Duty-Cycle (RDC) MAC protocols try to reduce the energy consumption
by allowing a node to keep its radio-transceiver off most of the time.
 This allow a node to avoid to keep the radio on unnecessarily, i.e when not involved in
any transmission
 Idle listening is used to solve such problem in which RDC MAC forces node to switch its
transceiver between short active(listen) periods and long inactive (sleep) periods
ContikiMAC

 ContikiMAC is a radio duty cycling protocol that uses periodical wake-ups to

listen for packet transmissions from neighbors.
 If a packet transmission is detected during a wake-up,
 the receiver is kept on to be able to receive the packet.
 When the packet is successfully received, the receiver sends a link layer
acknowledgment.
 To transmit a packet, a sender repeatedly sends its packet until it receives a link
layer acknowledgment from the receiver Figure 1
 Packets that are sent a broadcasts do not result in link layer
acknowledgments.
 Instead, the sender repeatedly sends the packet during the full wake-up interval
 to ensure that all neighbors have received it. Figure 2
ContikiMAC- Figure 1

Radio on

D Data frame

A ACK frame

Sender D D D DA

Receiver DA

Channel check Transmission detected

ContikiMAC broadcast-Figure 2
ContikiMAC Implementation

 Contiki real-time timers (rtimer)

 to schedule its periodic wake-ups to ensure a stable behavior even if many
underlying processes are running.
 The real-time timers preempt any Contiki process at the exact time at which they
are scheduled.
 The ContikiMAC wake-up mechanism runs as a protothread
 that is scheduled by a periodic real-
time timer.
 This protothread performs the periodic
wake-ups
and implements the fast sleep
optimization.
ContikiMAC Implementation-cont’

 Transmissions are driven by an ordinary Contiki process:

 If a wake-up is scheduled to occur when the radio is busy
during a transmission,
 the wake-up timer schedules a new wake-up after another wake-up
interval without performing the wake-up.
 phase-lock mechanism is implemented as a separate module from
ContikiMAC
 To allow other duty cycle like X-MAC to use it .
 The phase-lock mechanism maintains a list of neighbors and their wake-
up phases
ContikiMAC Implementation-cont’

 ContikiMAC transmission logic records the time of each packet transmission.

 When a link layer acknowledgment is received,
 it notifies the phase-lock module with the transmission time of the last packet.
 this time is used as an approximation of the wake-up phase of the receiver
 Before starting a transmission,
 the ContikiMAC transmission logic calls the phase-lock module to check if it has a
recorded wake-up phase of the intended receiver.
 If so,
 the phase-lock code queues the packet to be transmitted and
 sets a callback timer (ctimer) at the time of the expected wake-up of the receiver.
 ContikiMAC will then resume the transmission when the callback occurs.
ContikiMAC Implementation-cont’

 The transmission will then be significantly shorter than

a normal transmission,
 because it occurs just before the neighbor is expected to be awake.
 Reducing the length of the transmission thus reduces radio
congestion.
Two types of MAC protocols in ContikiOS :
• nullmac (core/net/mac/nullmac.c) and
• csma (core/net/mac/csma).

The first one is a simple pass-through protocol that simply calls the
appropriate RDC functions.
And the second one implements addressing, sequence number and
retransmissions.

CSMA protocol keep a list of packets to each of the neighbors and calculate
statistics such as number of retransmissions, collisions, deferrals, etc.
Even though the name, CSMA mean Carrier-Sense Medium Access, the
implementation in ContikiOS does not rely on the carrier sensing, because
the medium access is performed by RDC protocol.
 MAC Drivers

• Contiki provides two MAC drivers, CSMA and NullMAC

• CSMA is the default mechanism.
• MAC layer receives incoming packets from the RDC layer and uses the RDC
layer
to transmit packets
• If the RDC layer or the radio layer detects a radio collision
• The mac will retry later
• CSMA mechanism is currently the only MAC layer that retransmits packets if
a collision is detected. The most commonly used are
• ContikiMAC,
• CSMA
• NullRDC
• ContikiMAC provides a very good power efficiency but is somewhat tailored for the
802.15.4 radio and the CC2420 radio transceiver
References
:
• Fundamentals of Wireless Sensor Networks:
Theory and Practice Waltenegus Dargie and
Christian Poellabauer © 2010 John Wiley &
Sons Ltd.

• https://anrg.usc.edu/contiki/index.php/
MAC_protocols_in_ContikiOS
Thank You!!