Protocol options for low power sensor network MAC using wake up receivers with duty cycling
Advances in miniaturization of sensor nodes enable a wide range of novel application scenarios. At the same time, however, this miniaturization drastically reduces the energy available for communication. We focus on wildlife monitoring applications for bats, which set a weight limit of 2 g for the sensor node including the battery. Here, the protocol design is complicated by the need to recharge a capacitor before each communication attempt. For communications with ground stations, wake up receivers are used that inherently help mitigate synchronization demands and to provide a superframe structure. We study the not obvious choice of transmission slots within these synchronized superframes. Our findings clearly indicate that slotted access outperforms simple random channel access. Well planned TDMA schedules only bring little gain compared to random slot selection.
2016 IEEE International Conference on Communications (ICC)