A wireless sensor networks MAC protocol for real-time applications.

Wireless Sensor Networks (WSN) are designed for data gathering and processing, with particular requirements: 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 (V...

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Bibliographic Details
Authors: Egea López, Esteban, Vales Alonso, Javier, Martínez Sala, Alejandro Santos, García Haro, Juan, Pavón Mariño, Pablo, Bueno Delgado, María Victoria
Format: article
Publication Date:2008
Country:España
Institution:Universidad Politécnica de Cartagena(UPCT)
Repository:Repositorio Digital UPCT
OAI Identifier:oai:repositorio.upct.es:10317/424
Online Access:http://hdl.handle.net/10317/424
Access Level:Open access
Keyword:Wireless sensor networks
MAC protocols
Real-time applications
Ingeniería Telemática
Description
Summary:Wireless Sensor Networks (WSN) are designed for data gathering and processing, with particular requirements: 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 frame is set up and maintained by a distributed procedure, which allows sensors to asynchronously join and leave the frame. In addition, duty cycle is increased or decreased in order to keep latency constant below a given deadline. Therefore, a major advantage of VTS is that it guarantees a bounded latency, which allows soft real-time applications.