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Minimizing inter-cluster interference by self-reorganizing MAC allocation in sensor networks

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Abstract

This paper presents a Self-Reorganizing Slot Allocation (SRSA) mechanism for TDMA based Medium Access Control (MAC) protocols in wireless sensor networks. With TDMA, a node can achieve significant energy savings by remaining active only during allocated slots for transmissions and receptions. In multi-cluster networks, it is often necessary for nodes to use either CDMA or FDMA for preventing interference across neighbor clusters. The goal of this paper is to provide an alternative design that can reduce inter-cluster TDMA interference without having to use spectrum expensive CDMA or FDMA. The primary contribution of this paper is to demonstrate that with adaptive slot allocation, it is possible to reduce such interference under low loading conditions, which is often the case for sensor networks with monitoring applications. The second contribution is to design a feedback based adaptive allocation protocol that can significantly reduce those interferences without relying on any global synchronization mechanisms. We present the design of SRSA and provide a simulation based characterization of the protocol in comparison with TDMA-over-CDMA, TDMA with random slot allocation and CSMA MAC protocols. The results indicate that with moderate cluster overlapping and low traffic loading, SRSA can significantly reduce inter-cluster TDMA interference while delivering TDMA-over-CDMA like energy efficiency, at the cost of higher delivery latency. Assuming its low complexity and narrow-band operation, SRSA can be an ideal sensor MAC protocol for applications that can tolerate relatively larger delivery latency but not frequent packet drops.

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Authors and Affiliations

  1. Department of Electrical and Computer Engineering, Michigan State University, 2120 Engineering Building, East Lansing, MI, 48824, USA

    Tao Wu & Subir Biswas

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  1. Tao Wu
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  2. Subir Biswas
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Correspondence to Subir Biswas.

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This work was partially supported by a grant from National Science Foundation (SCI-0438271)

Tao Wu received B.E. degree in automatic control and M.S. degree in pattern recognition from University of Electronic Science and Technology of China, Chengdu, China in 2001 and 2004 respectively. He is currently a Ph.D. student in electrical and computer engineering at Michigan State University. His research interests include wireless sensor networks and distributed computing.

Subir Biswas is an Associate Professor and the director of Networked Embedded and Wireless Systems laboratory at the Electrical and Computer Engineering Department of Michigan State University. Subir received his Ph.D. from University of Cambridge and he held various research positions in NEC Research Institute, Princeton, AT&T Laboratories, Cambridge, and Tellium Optical Systems, NJ. He has published over 50 peer-reviewed articles in the area of wireless network protocols, and a co-inventor of 4 U.S. patents. Subir’s current research interests include the broad area of wireless data networking, low-power network protocols, application-specific sensor networks and wireless network security. He is a senior member of IEEE and a fellow of Cambridge Philosophical Society.

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Wu, T., Biswas, S. Minimizing inter-cluster interference by self-reorganizing MAC allocation in sensor networks. Wireless Netw 13, 691–703 (2007). https://doi.org/10.1007/s11276-006-8150-5

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