Publication Date

12-2012

Type of Culminating Activity

Thesis

Degree Title

Master of Science in Computer Science

Department

Computer Science

Supervisory Committee Chair

Sirisha Medidi, Ph.D.

Abstract

Wireless Sensor Network (WSNs) are generally energy-constrained and resource-constrained. When multiple simultaneous events occur in densely deployed WSNs, nodes near the base station can become congested, decreasing the network performance. Additionally, multiple nodes may sense an event leading to spatially-correlated contention, further increasing congestion. In order to mitigate the effects of congestion near the base station, an energy-efficient Media Access Control (MAC) protocol that can handle multiple simultaneous events and spatially-correlated contention is needed. Energy efficiency is important and can be achieved using duty cycles but they could degrade the network performance in terms of latency. Existing protocols either provide support for congestion near the base station or for managing spatially-correlated contention. To provide energy-efficiency while maintaining the networks performance under higher traffic load, we propose an energy-efficient congestion-aware MAC protocol. This protocol provides support for congestion near the base station and spatially-correlated contention by employing a traffic shaping approach to manage the arrival times of packets to the layers close to the base station. We implemented our protocol using the ns-2 simulator for evaluating its performance. Results show that our protocol has an improvement in the number of packets received at the base station while consuming less energy.

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