Energy Consumption of Fair-Access in Sensor Networks with Linear and Selected Grid Topologies

In this paper, we investigate energy consumption of medium access control (MAC) for multi-hop sensor networks. In a wireless sensor network, one of the primary tasks of sensor nodes is to gather data and give an accurate measurement of the sensing environment. Thus, obtaining a fair amount of data from each sensor node plays a key role to achieve this objective. In this scenario, we adopt the model of a fair-access criterion which requires that sensor nodes have an equal rate of frame delivery to the base station. Then we derive tight lower bounds on network energy consumption in a cycle during which the base station successfully receives at least one original data frame from each sensor node. The unique aspect of this study is that the lower bounds on energy consumption hold for any MAC protocol. Furthermore, we prove that these bounds are tight.