skip to main content
article

Z-MAC: a hybrid MAC for wireless sensor networks

Published: 01 June 2008 Publication History

Abstract

This paper presents the design, implementation and performance evaluation of a hybrid MAC protocol, called Z-MAC, for wireless sensor networks that combines the strengths of TDMA and CSMA while offsetting their weaknesses. Like CSMA, ZMAC achieves high channel utilization and low latency under low contention and like TDMA, achieves high channel utilization under high contention and reduces collision among two-hop neighbors at a low cost. A distinctive feature of Z-MAC is that its performance is robust to synchronization errors, slot assignment failures, and time-varying channel conditions; in the worst case, its performance always falls back to that of CSMA. Z-MAC is implemented in TinyOS.

References

[1]
H. Balakrishnan, "Opportunities in high-rate wireless sensor networking," in Proc. NSF NOSS Principal Investigator and Informational Meetings, Oct. 2004 {Online}. Available: http://toilers.mines. edu/noss/Infoagenda.html
[2]
A. Woo and D. E. Culler, "A transmission control scheme for media access in sensor networks," in Proc. ACM MobiCom, New York, 2001, pp. 221-235.
[3]
J. Polastre, J. Hill, and D. Culler, "Versatile low power media access for wireless sensor networks," in Proc. ACM SenSys, New York, 2004, pp. 95-107.
[4]
W. Ye, J. Heidemann, and D. Estrin, "Medium access control with co-ordinated adaptive sleeping for wireless sensor networks," IEEE/ACM Trans. Netw., vol. 12, no. 3, pp. 493-506, Jun. 2004.
[5]
S. Ramanathan, "A unified framework and algorithms for (T/F/C)DMA channel assignment in wireless networks," in Proc. IEEE INFOCOM, 1997, pp. 900-907.
[6]
G. Zhou, T. He, S. Krishnamurthy, and J. A. Stankovic, "Impact of radio irregularity on wireless sensor networks," in Proc. ACM MobiSys, New York, 2004, pp. 125-138.
[7]
I. Rhee, A. Warrier, J. Min, and L. Xu, "DRAND: Distributed randomized TDMA scheduling for wireless ad hoc networks," in Proc. ACM MobiHoc, New York, 2006, pp. 190-201.
[8]
T. van Dam and K. Langendoen, "An adaptive energy-efficient mac protocol for wireless sensor networks," in Proc. ACM SenSys, New York, 2003, pp. 171-180.
[9]
J. Hill and D. Culler, "A wireless embedded sensor architecture system-level optimization," Univ. California, Berkeley, Tech. Rep., 2001.
[10]
Y. Tay, K. Jamieson, and H. Balakrishnan, "Collisionminimizing CSMA and its applications to wireless sensor networks," IEEE J. Sel. Areas Commun., vol. 22, no. 6, pp. 1048-1057, Aug. 2004.
[11]
K. Jamieson, H. Balakrishnan, and Y. C. Tay, "Sift: A MACprotocol for event-driven wireless sensor networks," in Proc. EWSN, 2006, pp. 260-275.
[12]
J. Li and G. Y. Lazarou, "A bit-map-assisted energy-efficient MAC scheme for wireless sensor networks," in Proc. IPSN, New York, 2004, pp. 55-60.
[13]
V. Rajendran, K. Obraczka, and J. J. Garcia-Luna-Aceves, "Energy-efficient, collision-free medium access control for wireless sensor networks," Wireless Netw., vol. 12, no. 1, pp. 63-78, 2006.
[14]
A. Ephremides and O. A. Mowafi, "Analysis of a hybrid access scheme for buffered users-probabilistic time division," IEEE Trans. Software Eng., vol. SE-8, no. 1, pp. 52-61, Jan. 1982.
[15]
S. Ganeriwal, R. Kumar, and M. B. Srivastava, "Timing-sync protocol for sensor networks," in Proc. ACM SenSys, New York, 2003, pp. 138-149.
[16]
A. L. Edwards, "The correlation coefficient," in An Introduction to Linear Regression and Correlation. San Francisco, CA: W. H. Freeman, 1976, pp. 33-46.
[17]
C.-Y. Wan, S. B. Eisenman, and A. T. Campbell, "CODA: Congestion detection and avoidance in sensor networks," in Proc. ACM SenSys, New York, 2003, pp. 266-279.
[18]
Audio-Video Transport Working GroupH. Schulzrinne, S. Casner, R. Frederick, and V. Jacobson, "RTP: A transport protocol for real-time applications," RFC 1889, Jan. 1996.
[19]
A. Woo, T. Tong, and D. Culler, "Taming the underlying challenges of reliable multihop routing in sensor networks," in Proc. ACM SenSys, New York, 2003, pp. 14-27.
[20]
R. Jain, D.-M. Chiu, and W. Hawe, "A quantitative measure of fairness and discrimination for resource allocation in shared computer system," Digital Equipment Corp., Tech. Rep., 1984.

Cited By

View all

Recommendations

Comments

Information & Contributors

Information

Published In

cover image IEEE/ACM Transactions on Networking
IEEE/ACM Transactions on Networking  Volume 16, Issue 3
June 2008
249 pages

Publisher

IEEE Press

Publication History

Published: 01 June 2008
Published in TON Volume 16, Issue 3

Author Tags

  1. CSMA
  2. MAC
  3. TDMA
  4. wireless sensor networks

Qualifiers

  • Article

Contributors

Other Metrics

Bibliometrics & Citations

Bibliometrics

Article Metrics

  • Downloads (Last 12 months)4
  • Downloads (Last 6 weeks)0
Reflects downloads up to 20 Feb 2025

Other Metrics

Citations

Cited By

View all
  • (2025)Two-Dimensional Balanced Partitioning and Efficient Caching for Distributed Graph AnalysisIEEE Transactions on Parallel and Distributed Systems10.1109/TPDS.2024.350129236:2(133-149)Online publication date: 1-Feb-2025
  • (2024)MAC Optimization Protocol for Cooperative UAV Based on Dual Perception of Energy Consumption and Channel GainIEEE Transactions on Mobile Computing10.1109/TMC.2024.337225323:10(9851-9862)Online publication date: 1-Oct-2024
  • (2024)Creating small ad hoc networksVehicular Communications10.1016/j.vehcom.2023.10069445:COnline publication date: 1-Feb-2024
  • (2023)Lower and upper bounds for deterministic convergecast with labeling schemesTheoretical Computer Science10.1016/j.tcs.2023.113775952:COnline publication date: 31-Mar-2023
  • (2023)IRISComputer Networks: The International Journal of Computer and Telecommunications Networking10.1016/j.comnet.2023.109666225:COnline publication date: 1-Apr-2023
  • (2022)A Novel Time-Interval Based Modulation for Large-Scale, Low-Power, Wide-Area-NetworksACM Transactions on Sensor Networks10.1145/354954318:4(1-30)Online publication date: 29-Nov-2022
  • (2022)Towards Fast Large-scale Graph Analysis via Two-dimensional Balanced PartitioningProceedings of the 51st International Conference on Parallel Processing10.1145/3545008.3545060(1-11)Online publication date: 29-Aug-2022
  • (2022)Load-balance scheduling for intelligent sensors deployment in industrial internet of thingsCluster Computing10.1007/s10586-021-03316-125:3(1715-1727)Online publication date: 1-Jun-2022
  • (2021)A Comprehensive Survey of Medium Access Control Protocols for Wireless Body Area NetworksWireless Communications & Mobile Computing10.1155/2021/55615802021Online publication date: 1-Jan-2021
  • (2021)Recorp: Receiver-oriented Policies for Industrial Wireless NetworksACM Transactions on Sensor Networks10.1145/346061817:4(1-32)Online publication date: 22-Jul-2021
  • Show More Cited By

View Options

Login options

Full Access

View options

PDF

View or Download as a PDF file.

PDF

eReader

View online with eReader.

eReader

Figures

Tables

Media

Share

Share

Share this Publication link

Share on social media