A new Uni-Scheduling algorithm in S-MAC based wireless sensor networks

In practice, a significant amount of power is spent for processing of transmission and reception of information in wireless sensor network (WSN). The variant rate of depletion of power in the sensing devices can hamper the network´s efficient operation and therefore its lifetime. There are normally, in practical systems, certain considerations taken at each layer to prolong the network lifetime. This paper investigates one of the Medium Access Control (MAC) protocols called Sensor-MAC (S-MAC) protocol. In S-MAC, the first task of WSN is to find the neighbor nodes and then broadcast its own schedule. Thus diversified schedules are generated in the network and at the end different schedule clusters are made. If a node exists on the border of these clusters, it fails to communicate with one another due to inconsistent listen time. Therefore, the border node adopts diversified scheduling to keep on the listening mode for a longer period of time. In this paper, the authors have proposed a new unified scheduling algorithm to increase the lifetime of the border node and have evaluated its performance through simulation. The simulation results show that the border node has consumed less power for larger as well as smaller networks with the proposed approach.