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Local Group Communication-aware MAC Protocol in Wireless Sensor Networks

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Abstract

In this paper, we investigate the problem of providing efficient communication primitives across domains of wireless sensor network (WSN) applications. We argue both qualitatively and quantitatively that group communication among sensors of geographic proximity is one of the basic building blocks of many WSN applications. Furthermore, group communication awareness needs to be embedded and implemented at the MAC layer due to the broadcast nature of wireless medium. We devise a MAC protocol, called LGC-MAC to enable efficient single-hop one-to-many and many-to-one communication. We present case studies of two example applications, acoustic target tracking and propagation of information with feedback using LGC-MAC and demonstrate that LGC-MAC can improve the response time, alleviate channel contention and provide better fault tolerance to packet collisions and wireless errors.

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Notes

  1. Following the convention in IEEE 802.11 MAC, the MAC address is 48-bits long.

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Authors and Affiliations

  1. Department of Computer Science, University of Houston, Houston, TX, 77204, USA

    Rong Zheng & Jatindera Singh Walia

  2. Department of Computer Science, University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign, Urbana, IL, 61801, USA

    Lui Sha

Authors
  1. Rong Zheng
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  2. Jatindera Singh Walia
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  3. Lui Sha
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Correspondence to Rong Zheng.

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Zheng, R., Walia, J.S. & Sha, L. Local Group Communication-aware MAC Protocol in Wireless Sensor Networks. Int J Wireless Inf Networks 13, 275–287 (2006). https://doi.org/10.1007/s10776-006-0038-x

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  • DOI: https://doi.org/10.1007/s10776-006-0038-x

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