Temperature MAC plug-in for large scale WSN

The quality of radio communication links decreases with high temperatures. In this paper, we investigate the effect of temperature on percolation-based connectivity in large scale wireless sensor networks and show that more energy can be saved by allowing some nodes to go to deep sleep mode when temperature decreases and links improve. We determine a closed-form formula for a threshold network density equation in function of temperature τ. Beyond λ*(τ), the network percolates and guarantees connectivity. Based on this result, we propose a simple yet efficient Temperature-Aware MAC plugin (TA-MAC) that enables the underlying MAC protocol to dynamically adapt the network effective density to allow further energy savings while maintaining network connectivity. TA-MAC can be potentially used with any wireless MAC protocol. We carried out simulations and demonstrated that BMAC and SCP-MAC augmented with TA-MAC plugin allow a significant energy efficiency improvement.