R-MAC: A MAC Protocol for Power Reduction in Wireless Sensor Networks Based on Load Estimation and Its Performance Evaluation

In sensor networks, small sensor nodes which are distributed in an area send various data and send them to the sink node by multi-hop transmission. The sensor networks cover various application fields such as safety management, health management, grasping of nature environment, military and so on. The sensor networks will be used as a technique for constructing ubiquitous society because of low cost and easy construction. However, since the nodes are small, the consumption power is limited. Also, they have problems with transmission power and speed. To solve these problems, various protocols are proposed. In this paper, we propose a MAC protocol for power reduction based on load estimation called R-MAC. The R-MAC estimates the network load and its behavior is adapted based on the network load. Therefore, it is possible to improve the power consumption and transmission delay. We evaluated the performance of R-MAC protocol by computer simulation and verified that R-MAC has better performance than S-MAC conventional MAC protocol. We also evaluate the performance of R-MAC for 2 scenarios and show that R-MAC has a very good and adaptive behavior.