The Second International Conference on Sensor Technologies and Applications

Low Energy Consumption MAC Protocol for Wireless Sensor Networks

M. H. F. Ghazvini, M. Vahabi, M. F. A. Rasid,

R. S. A. R. Abdullah, and W. M. N. M. W. Musa
Department of Computer and Communication Systems Engineering, Faculty of Engineering,
Universiti Putra Malaysia, Selangor, Malaysia
{fotouhi, vahabi@ieee.org, fadlee, rsa@eng.upm.edu.my, muzaaliff@gmail.com}

Abstract and unobtrusively monitor physiological parameters of

Recent technological advances in sensors, low
power integrated circuits, and wireless
communications have enabled the design of low-cost,
lightweight, and intelligent physiological sensor nodes.
The IEEE 802.15.4 is a new wireless personal area
network standard designed for wireless monitoring
and control applications. The fast progress of research
on energy efficiency in wireless sensor networks, and
the need to compare with the solutions adopted in the
standards motivates the need for this work. In the
analysis presented, the star network configuration of
802.15.4 standard at 868 MHz is considered for a
Zigbee network. In this paper, a new MAC protocol,
EMAC, has been proposed. We analyzed the active
duration of the superframe and entered the sleep mode
status inside this active period. By this mechanism, the
idle listening will be decreased and leads to more
energy efficiency.
1. Introduction
Recent advances in Micro-electromechanical
Systems, tiny microprocessors and low power radio
technologies have created low-cost, low-power, multi-
functional miniature sensor devices, which can observe
and react to changes in physical phenomena of their
surrounding environments. When sensors connect
together over a wireless medium, these devices can
provide an overall result of their sensing functionality.
The use of this technology appears to be limited
only by our imagination and ingenuity. A diverse set of
applications for sensor networks encompassing
different fields have already emerged including
medicine, agriculture, environment, military, inventory
monitoring, intrusion detection, motion tracking,
machine malfunction, toys and many others. In the
medical field, sensor networks can be used to remotely
patients such as heartbeat or blood pressure, and report
to the hospital when some parameters are altered
[1,2,3].
Energy efficiency is a fundamental theme pervading
the design of communication protocols developed for
wireless sensor networks (WSNs), including routing
and MAC layer protocols. Clustering and hierarchical
techniques are used to reduce the amount of energy
consumption as proposed in [4,5]. Additionally, it is
useful to compare the performance of energy
efficiency with other network metrics such as end-to-
end delay [6,7]. Two main mechanisms for achieving
low energy consumption in energy constrained WSNs
in MAC layer are examined on how to deal with
collision and idle listening. The superframe of our
proposed MAC is based on 802.15.4 IEEE standard
and consists of two modes of active and inactive. We
consider the active part of the superframe and try to
reduce the packet collision and idle listening in the
network.
2. Related Works
S-MAC [8] is a low power RTC-CTS based MAC
protocol that makes use of loose synchronization
between nodes to allow for duty cycling in sensor
networks. The protocol uses three techniques to
achieve low power duty cycling: periodic sleep, virtual
clustering, and adaptive listening. The nodes in the
network periodically wake up, receive and transmit
data, and return to sleep.
T-MAC [9] improves on the design of S-MAC by
shortening the awake period if the channel is idle. In S-
MAC, the nodes will remain awake throughout the
entire awake period even if they are neither sending
nor receiving data. T-MAC improves S-MAC by
listening to the channel for only a short time after the
synchronization phase, and if no data is received

978-0-7695-3330-8/08 $25.00 2008 IEEE 49

DOI 10.1109/SENSORCOMM.2008.95
during this window, the node returns to sleep mode. B-
MAC [10] is a CSMA-based technique that utilizes
low power listening and an extended preamble to
achieve low power communication. Nodes have an
awake and a sleep period, and each node can have an
independent schedule. If a node wishes to transmit, it
precedes the data packet with a preamble that is
slightly longer than the sleep period of the receiver.
Wise-MAC [11] also uses preamble sampling to
achieve low power communications. Wise-MAC uses
a similar technique to B-MAC.
Adaptive backoff exponent algorithm focused
mainly on managing the backoff exponent to reduce
collision in high traffic networks [12]. It checks the
network load and changes the superframe duration
appropriately, so, as to vary the active and inactive
periods of the superframe to suit the requirements of
the network under the working traffic conditions.
The idea of using sleep mode in the contention
access period in IEEE 802.11 which has been used in
S-MAC, B-MAC, T-MAC and many other protocols,
is added to IEEE 802.15.4 standard and has been
compared with one of the latest energy efficient MAC
protocols [12] which is organised on WPAN.
3. Protocol Design
The algorithm of the proposed model consists of two
techniques which are introduced in the following
subsections.
3.1 Sleep State in MAC 802.15.4
The IEEE 802.15.4 achieves a low-duty cycle
operation by means of its beacon-enabled mode. In this
mode, a PAN coordinator periodically disseminates a
superframe structure bounded by a beacon frame into
the network and manages its active/inactive period.
Any associated devices are allowed to communicate in
active period and conserve energy by turning off their
transceiver during the inactive period. However, when
we assume to stay in the active mode, the idle listening
limits the overall performance of the system due to the
fact that the power consumption is increased.
This paper proposed an Efficient MAC (EMAC) for
wireless sensor networks, based on IEEE 802.15.4
standard. In our scheme, a coordinator can observe the
network traffic due to the data information associated
with devices. It can manage the PANs to enter in sleep
mode when they do not have packet to send.
In this model, devices having no data traffic are not
required to continuously maintain an active state even
when they are in their superframe duration. If a node
50
finds pending data traffic in its queue buffer, it tries to
convey the traffic information to its coordinator.
3.2 Adaptive Backoff Exponent Algorithm
In MAC 802.15.4, there is an exponential increase
in the number of packet drops at high data rates.
During channel access the CSMA-CA algorithm is
allowed to use only a very small range of backoff
exponents (macMinBE to aMaxBE), where by the
minimum BE a device can support is indicated by
macMinBE=3 and the maximum by aMaxBE=5. Since
the variable BE determines the number of backoff slots
the devices shall wait to access the channel; the higher
the value of BE, the longer the device will spend trying
to access the channel in some cases. The longer wait
adds to the power consumption of the device.
Therefore, a lower BE range is desired and ensures that
the devices will never spend too much time waiting for
channel access. This often allows two or more devices
to use the same number of backoff slots. As a result
they detect an idle channel simultaneously and proceed
with their transmissions, resulting in frequent
collisions. The ABE algorithm [12] is based on
providing higher range of backoff exponents to the
devices, to reduce the probability of devices choosing
the same number of backoff slots to sense the channel.
The minimum backoff exponent is also variable; hence
devices are not likely to start off with the same backoff
exponent when they wish to start a data transmission.
4. Assumptions
We confine EMAC to 802.15.4 networks operating
in a one-hop star topology. Such a star topology may
also exist inside clusters in large networks of 802.15.4
devices. We consider that all sensors are in a beacon-
enabled mode and the superframe works just in active
mode and this will be achieved by taking the same
values for superframe order (SFO) and beacon order
(BCO).
5. Proposed Algorithm
The proposed approach takes into account both
techniques of idle listening and packet collision to
overcome the energy consumption problem.
The MAC IEEE 802.15.4 has active and inactive
modes. The inactive period allows nodes to sleep
periodically, but most of the applications are delay-
critical, so, we just selected the active mode.
It is apparent that it takes time for each state
transition, but as mentioned in [13] this time is very
short and does not affect the performance of our work
and also has a significant effect on the overall energy
Startup
consumption in the network.
As indicated before, we consider a beacon-enabled
network with no inactive part in the superframe, in Is there
N
which the nodes can sleep since when they do not have Sleep mode
any pkt to
send
any packet to send. Given this, we allow nodes to enter
the shutdown state when they have not packet to send Y
Wait for
to the coordinator. We consider the case when radios Startup
Idle mode
are allowed to enter the shutdown state if there is no
packet to be transmitted. Radio shutdown has been
PKT_DIFFERENCE=5
shown to be very effective in conserving nodes numBeaconIntervals=3
energy consumption. numReceivedPkts=0

On the other hand we have used the adaptive

backoff exponent [12] to decrease the collision in the
network. This idea provides a higher range of backoff N
Data
pkt
exponents to the devices. The macMinBE is rcvd
dynamically incremented or decremented due to the
load changes and is initialized with 3 in first three Y
NumReceivedPkts++
beacon intervals. Also the devices are allowed to use a
higher backoff exponents (aMaxBE=7).
The nodes are grouped into two, the first group
nodes are whose macMinBE (minimum backoff Completed 3
N
exponent) is to be decreased by 1. These are the nodes Normal beacon beacon
intervals
which contribute less to the network traffic compared construction steps

to the other nodes. Group two, comprises whose

Y
macMinBE is to be increased by 1. When the number
transmitted packets (a measure of traffic) by group-2 Increment and decrement
Arrange pkts into
group 1 and 2
procedure of beacon
nodes differ from group-1 nodes by at least PKT- exponents
DIFFERENCE number of packets. This value is
defined to separate the nodes into two groups. Figure 1
shows the algorithm of our work in a flow chart. numReceivedPkts[group 2 1st
N elements]-numReceivedPkts[0]>=
Power consumption in various states of a radio PKT_DIFFERENCE
differs, including long-term average dissipation in the
various states as well as power consumption during
state transitions. The Chipset radio of ZMD44101 [14] Y

which is used in our design supports the following four Set num of group 1 and 2
elements in beacon payload
states: specification

(1) Shutdown or Sleep: The crystal oscillator is
switched off and the radio is completely
disabled waiting for a startup strobe.
(2) Idle: The crystal oscillator is turned on and
the radio is ready to receive commands to
switch to Transmit or Receive state.
(3) Transmit: The radio is actively transmitting.
(4) Receive: The radio is actively receiving.
It is apparent that it takes some time to switch from
one state to another, and this aspect will affect the
overall energy consumption in wireless sensor
networks, particularly those characterized by low
transmission duty cycles.
Figure 1. The flow chart of proposed model
As indicated before, we consider a beacon-enabled
network with no inactive part in the superframe in
which the nodes can sleep. Since the power
consumption in the idle state is several times more than
what might be considered reasonable, it is not
sufficient to keep the nodes in the idle state when they
are not transmitting or receiving. We must therefore
find alternative ways to put the nodes to sleep even in
active part of the superframe. However, for
benchmarking purposes, we start out by leaving the
nodes in idle state when they are not active. We allow
the nodes to enter the shutdown state when not active

51
and evaluate its impact on the power consumption, and
throughput.
The radio stays in the idle state until requested to
either receive a beacon or perform a clear channel
assessment (CCA); at that time, it transitions to the
receive state. If beacon reception was requested, the
radio returns to the idle state after receiving the
beacon. If CCA was requested, after two CCA backoff
slots, it either transitions to transmit state, if the
channel is found to be idle or back to the idle state if
the channel is busy.
We assume that part of the time spent by a node in
idle state is used to receive the beacons. This is
reasonable, particularly at low traffic rates, since the
nodes spend most of their time in idle state. It may be
noted that, in a 1-hop sensor-net, the only time a
sensing node is receiving data is during beacon
duration. While it may be possible to explicitly define
a node state for this beacon-receive duration, we make
a simplifying assumption that the beacon reception
occurs during the nodes idle state and adjust the
power consumption budget accordingly. This
adjustment is necessary since the radios receive state
power expenditure is several orders of magnitude
higher than its idle state power dissipation.
We now consider the case when radios are allowed
to enter the shutdown state if there is no packet to be
transmitted. Radio shutdown is very effective in
conserving the nodes energy consumption. The
energy model in this case is as follows: If there is no
packet waiting to be transmitted, that is, when the node
is in the idle state of Figure 2, the node remains in its
shutdown state. Whenever a new packet arrives for
transmission, the radio is awoken to perform carrier
sensing and subsequent transmission. It is shown in
Figure 3. that it takes about 3 backoff slots (960s) to
switch the radio from the Shutdown state to the Idle
state and another six-tenths of a backoff slot (192s) to
switch to the receive slate.
Shutdown
RX Idle TX
Figure 2. Energy states and transitions
The total time from radio shutdown to receive state
is therefore 3.6 backoff slots. We claim that this
transition time does not affect the throughput or
latency significantly but results in considerable energy
savings. This is because the standard requires that
52
every node back off for a random number of backoff
slots before sensing the channel for the first time. This
backoff time can be used to turn on the radio since the
node is not required to do channel sensing when its
backoff timer is counting down (in contrast to IEEE
802.11, e.g.,). Depending on the exact number of
backoff slots, additional backoff slots may or may not
be needed to completely account for radio start-up
time. The time diagram of EMAC superframe is
illustrated in Figure 3.
The following equation (2) shows the average
power consumed in each node of the network [15].
Each state transition has its specific amount of energy
dissipation due to the sensor's brand.
Yaverage aYShutdown  bYIdle  cYRX  dYTR (2)
The factors a, b, c and d depend on the time duration
that takes in each state and the time transition between
passing the states.
Figure 3. Time diagram of energy states
6. Simulation and Results
The simulation results are derived with network
simulator-2 (ns-2) [16]. Since the routing issues are not
the main focus, we assumed simple AODV routing
which is more suitable for our model. . Eight traffic
flows with CBR traffic and one way communication
from nodes to coordinator has been defined. The size
of each packet is assumed to be 70 bytes. Two-ray
ground propagation model with an Omni antenna has
been used. The nodes are placed in 10 meter far from
sink on the environment of a circle. All nodes are
within the carrier sensing range of each other. This
ensures that an ongoing transmission will not be
disrupted by other nodes.
6.1. Network Energy consumption vs. traffic
packet rate
Factors that affect this variable include all of the
standard sources of WSN energy loss: idle listening,
frame collisions, message overhearing, and protocol
overhead (MSDU header overhead data bits and 6.2. Throughput vs. traffic packet rate
control packets).
Throughput is a measurement of how quickly data
Table 1. List of power and current expenditures in information flows across the channel or network.
different radio modes
Throughput has physical limits, and protocol overhead,
Operation Power Current
data encoding schemes, error detection and correction
Transmit Power 0.0744 W 31 mA processes, or message retransmissions can slow down
Receive Power 0.048 W 27 mA the data flow. Throughput was measured in bits/second
Idle Power 0.002 W 1 mA and packets/second, and the performance rating with
Sleep Power 0.0048mW 2 PA higher rates.
It is demonstrated in Figure 5, the trend and amount
of throughput is same for EMAC and ABE algorithm.
Table 1 lists the primitive operations performed by
This proofs the throughput performance of the
a low power monitoring application and the observed
proposed protocol. The sleep power may not affect the
costs when using a ZMD44101 transceiver [14].
throughput of the system, because this metric is
These operations describe a representative class of
dependent on the successful data packets received in
radios for wireless sensor networks. The energy used
the coordinator node. The maximum throughput peak
by a node consists of the energy consumed by
of 802.15.4 is 5.4 kbps, where the other protocols
receiving, transmitting, listening of messages on the
reach to 6.8 kbps. The improvement of EMAC
radio channel, and sleeping which is shown in equation
compared to the 802.15.4 standard is around 21% by
4 [16].
using the adaptive backoff exponent algorithm. This
mechanism also helps the protocol to go to steady state
E E tx  E rx  E listen  E sleep (4) in higher data rates which is 2 packets/second.

EMAC limits idle listening to the coordinator node 8000

Network Throughput

while the end devices are not sensing any event. Figure ABE

4 highlights the energy performance analysis of MAC EMAC

802.15.4 standard
802.15.4, adaptive backoff exponent (ABE) algorithm, 6000
Throughput [kb/sec]

and the proposed MAC (EMAC). The traffic has been

varied from 0-3 packets/second. 4000

The adaptive backoff mechanism in ABE algorithm

helps the network to postpone its congestion area. At
2000
higher traffic rates, more number of nodes tries to
access the channel and the insufficient distribution of
backoff exponents increases the probability of nodes 0

using same number of backoff periods, making them

1

9
0.

0.

0.

0.

0.

1.

1.

1.

1.

1.

2.

2.

2.

2.

2.
Data Rate [pkt/sec]
prone to transmit simultaneously with other nodes. Figure 5. Throughput analysis

0.5
Energy Consumption
7. Conclusion
ABE
EMAC
0.4 802.15.4 standard
The simulation results show that the energy
consumption has been optimized significantly
Energy Consumption [%]

0.3
compared to 802.15.4 standard and ABE protocol.
Results evaluation indicates that the ABE mechanism
0.2
has also a positive effect on throughput performance.
The sleep mechanism has a tremendous influence on
0.1
the energy efficient aspect of the protocol. It provides
around 70% improvement over 802.15.4 standard,
0
where it has 60% better energy saving than ABE MAC
0.1 0.3 0.5 0.7 0.9 1.1 1.3 1.5 1.7

Data Rate [pkt/sec]

1.9 2.1 2.3 2.5 2.7 2.9
protocol. Overall, the combination of these two
Figure 4. Energy consumption analysis
methods fortifies our model and makes it far suitable
for sensor networks.

53
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