A Pseudo-TDMA MAC Protocol Using Randomly Determined Transmission Times for Landslide Prediction Wireless Sensor Networks

Landslides during heavy rainfall cause a great amount of damage in terms of both property and human life. To predict landslide disasters, we designed and implemented a wireless sensor network using our existing highly fault tolerant ad-hoc network. Since many sensors must be used, we propose a new MAC protocol that allows the network to support more sensor terminals. Our protocol is a hybrid CSMA/Psuedo-TDMA scheme which allows the terminals to decide their transmission timing independently in a random fashion. A timing beacon is not required, so power consumption can be reduced. Simulation results show that the number of terminals supported by the network can be greatly increased. key words: MAC protocol, TDMA, CSMA, wireless sensor networks, landslides, disaster prediction