SCL: A cross-layer protocol for wireless sensor networks

Wireless Sensor Networks are a class of distributed systems that are used to collect information from the physical area they inhabit. Many communication protocols at different layers have been proposed to reduce energy consumption. In this work, the main objective is to improve the channel utilization of wireless sensor networks using a hybrid access protocol based on a clustering routing scheme (SCL). The main idea of SCL is to use a hybrid access protocol to deal with the intra-cluster communications after dividing the whole network into several cells. The access scheme incorporates both contention-based (e.g., CSMA) and contention-free (e.g., TDMA) medium access schemes. TDMA is used when the networks are under high traffic or contention and CSMA is used during the clusters´ setup phase as well as low contention scenarios. The results provided by NS-2 simulations show that the SCL scheme, compared to other scheme which uses TDMA stand-alone, improves the throughput and reduces the latency of sensor networks.