SM3-MAC: a Multichannel Collision-Free MAC Protocol for Wireless Sensor Networks

Abstract

The protocol for the Medium Access Control layer (MAC) directly influences the operation of Wireless Sensor Networks (WSN), impacting on multiple metrics (latency, delivery rate and throughput). In current literature, multichannel scheduled protocols use complex mechanisms for time synchronization, channel and slots allocation, unsuitable for devices with limited hardware. In this paper, we present the Scheduled Multichannel Tree MAC (SM3-MAC), an efficient MAC protocol based on Time Division Multiple Access (TDMA), multichannel and contentionfree. Results obtained by extensive simulations show that the SM3-MAC is more effective than other traditional protocols and its implementation in real sensor nodes demonstrate its feasibility.