A Lightweight Medium Access Protocol (LMAC) for Wireless Sensor Networks: Reducing Preamble Transmissions and Transceiver State Switches

In this paper, we present an energy-efficient medium access protocol designed for wireless sensor networks. Although the protocol uses TDMA to give nodes in the WSN the opportunity to communicate collision-free, the network is self-organizing in terms of time slot assignment and synchronization. The main goal of the medium access protocol is to minimize overhead of the physical layer. The protocol reduces the number of transceiver state switches and hence the energy wasted in preamble transmissions. The protocol is compared to SMAC and EMACs by simulation. The LMAC protocol is able to extend the network lifetime by a factor 2.4 and 3.8, compared to EMACs and SMAC respectively.