Energy-efficient MAC schemes for Delay-Tolerant Sensor Networks

Abstract

Delay-Tolerant Sensor Networks (DTSN) experience long, unpredictable latency under fluctuating wireless networks with intermittent connectivity. Energy consumption and throughput improvement are essential in the design of MAC for DTSNs. However, when latency is relaxed in DTSN environments, traditional metrics such as throughput and energy consumption cannot express the transmission efficiency and energy consumption. Therefore, transmission strategies in DTSNs can use data packets over energy as energy efficiency to demonstrate efficiency under the requirements of high data volumes and energy conservation. In this paper, we examine and analyze the MAC parameters that impact energy efficiency with reservation-based and contention-based MAC approaches under DTSN environments. Simulation results from two typical MAC protocols also match the results of our analysis regarding energy efficiency in DTSN.