Title
A real-time MAC protocol for wireless sensor networks: virtual TDMA for sensors (VTS)
Abstract
Wireless Sensor Networks (WSN) are designed for data gathering and processing, with particular requirements and constraints: low hardware complexity, low energy consumption, special traffic pattern support, scalability, and in some cases, real-time operation. In this paper we present the Virtual TDMA for Sensors (VTS) MAC protocol, which intends to support the previous features, focusing particularly on real-time operation. VTS adaptively creates a TDMA arrangement with a number of timeslots equal to the actual number of nodes in range. Thus, VTS achieves an optimal throughput performance compared to TDMA protocols with fixed size of frame. The TDMA frame is set up and maintained by a distributed procedure, which allows sensors to asynchronously join and leave the frame. A major advantage of VTS is that it guarantees a bounded latency, which allows soft real-time applications. An expression for the upper latency bound is also provided in this paper. VTS performance is evaluated by simulation. Results show less power consumption than other proposals in the field. We also introduce a novel multi-hop operation by coordinated sleep/awake cycles among clusters.
Year
DOI
Venue
2006
10.1007/11682127_27
ARCS
Keywords
Field
DocType
virtual tdma,real-time operation,wireless sensor network,tdma protocol,real-time mac protocol,novel multi-hop operation,tdma arrangement,tdma frame,actual number,vts performance,soft real-time application,vts adaptively,real time,data gathering
Virtual network,Wireless network,Airfield traffic pattern,Computer science,Real-time computing,Throughput,Time division multiple access,Wireless sensor network,Scalability,Communications protocol
Conference
Volume
ISSN
ISBN
3894
0302-9743
3-540-32765-7
Citations 
PageRank 
References 
2
0.39
6
Authors
6