Adaptive Slow Backoff Algorithm for Channel Access in Wireless Sensor Networks

Wireless sensor network is a special multi-hop network without a centralized administration. Because of its speciality, direct application of the traditional CSMA protocol may cause more collisions, long delay problems and so on. Based on the analysis of the existing backoff algorithms in access layer, this paper proposes an adaptive slow backoff algorithm. Analysis and simulation results show that the new algorithm can improve newwork throughput efficiently. Especially when the network congestion varies seriously, the new algorithm can reduce overhead and keep the network throughput stable.