LASA: Low-energy adaptive slot allocation scheduling algorithm for wireless sensor networks

The wide range of wireless sensor network (WSN) applications makes it necessary to design MAC protocols that not only save energy and extend network life, but also improve network throughput, bandwidth utilization, and latency performance. In this paper we propose LASA (Low-energy Adaptive Slot Allocation) to replace the fix slot size in classical Time Division Multiple Access (TDMA) schemes by a variable slot size that dynamically adapts to the data size generated at sensor nodes. The proposed scheme eliminates slot idle time when nodes remain unnecessarily active with no data to transmit or receive. This approach outperforms the static slot size TDMA scheme, especially when there is a high traffic fluctuation and a big variance in the sensor data length. Our results show that this scheme significantly enhances network throughput, reduces bandwidth utilization, saves energy and extends network lifetime.