Energy minimization using nanoMAC protocols in multihop wireless sensor network

Sensor networks consist of large number of distributed nodes, which have ad hoc topology and high traffic rates. Since the traffic offered in the network is highly dynamic and sensor devices are battery operated, the medium access control (MAC) protocol designed for the network must be stable and should consume less energy. Conventional non-persistent carrier sense multiple access (CSMA) based MAC protocol is not suitable for wireless sensor network (WSN) because of higher probability of frame collisions and larger energy consumption at variable traffic rates. Hence this paper considers a carrier sense multiple access protocol with collision avoidance (CSMA/CA) called nanoMAC, which is more suitable for WSN to achieve high data and energy efficiency. Analysis of the nanoMAC protocol is carried out to evaluate the throughput, delay and energy consumption to maximize the lifetime of the multihop network. Simulation results show that using nanoMAC protocol for multihop forwarding is more energy efficient than single hop communication when the feasible transmission distance is out of the characteristic distance range.