An Adaptive Polling Periods MAC Protocol for Wireless Sensor Networks

To improve network performance in dynamic traffic load conditions, an adaptive polling periods MAC protocol called AA-MAC is proposed. Based on short preamble sampling technology, after receiving messages rather nodes in AA-MAC perform some additional polling periods than switch off radios immediately. It allows several transmissions upon one rendezvous between the sender and its destination especially when network traffic is high. To give insight into protocol, energy consumption and network latency are both modeled. Simulations on a 9 hop linear topology illustrate that AA-MAC is superior to S-MAC in any traffic conditions and it performs equally to X-MAC in light traffic conditions and performs better than X-MAC in high traffic conditions. When traffic load is high, AA-MAC decrease network latency by 56% compared to X-MAC.