Medium access control layer management for saving energy in wireless sensor networks routing algorithms

Abstract Wireless sensor networks (WSNs) consist of small nodes that are capable of sensing, computing, and communication. One of the greatest challenges in WSNs is the limitation of energy resources in nodes. This limitation applies to all of the protocols and algorithms that are used in these networks. Routing protocols in these networks should be designed considering this limitation. Many papers have been published examining low energy consumption networks. One of the techniques that has been used in this context is cross-layering. In this technique, to reduce the energy consumption, layers are not independent but they are related to each other and exchange information with each other. In this paper, a cross-layer design is presented to reduce the energy consumption in WSNs. In this design, the communication between the network layer and medium access layer has been established to help the control of efforts to access the line to reduce the number of failed attempts. In order to evaluate our proposed design, we used the NS2 software for simulation. Then, we compared our method with a cross-layer design based on an Ad-hoc On-demand Distance Vector routing algorithm. Simulation results show that our proposed idea reduces energy consumption and it also improves the packet delivery ratio and decreases the end-to-end delay in WSNs.