A Medium Access Control Protocol with Adaptive Parent Selection Mechanism for Large-Scale Sensor Networks

In the MAC protocols based on the S-MAC scheme, usually the combination of periodic sleep/listen scheduling and four-way handshake mechanism is employed to reduce idle listening and avoid interference. However, this combination greatly degrades network capacity and results in high end-to-end latency. In this paper, we propose Adaptive IAMAC to increase channel utilization and improve communication efficiency, specifically in large-scale sensor networks with low duty cycle. Adaptive IAMAC allows multiple nodes to transmit to their common parent during a frame. Moreover, it includes the adaptive parent selection mechanism, which enables the nodes to change their parent according to the currently overheard control packets at the MAC layer. Through these techniques, Adaptive IAMAC enhances network throughput, reduces end-to-end latency, and moderates the overhead of four-way handshake mechanism. Simulation results confirm that Adaptive IAMAC provides significant improvements over S-MAC in terms of throughput, latency, and energy efficiency.