A PROPOSED ENERGY EFFICIENT MEDIUM ACCESS CONTROL

PROTOCOL FOR WIRELESS SENSOR NETWORKS

YASSER KAREEM HUMMADI AL-RIKABI

UNIVERSITI UTARA MALAYSIA

2014

A Proposed Energy Efficient Medium Access Control Protocol for

Wireless Sensor Networks

A dissertation submitted to Dean of Research and Postgraduate Studies

Office

In partial Fulfillment of the requirement for the degree

Master of Science (Information Technology)

Universiti Utara Malaysia

By

Yasser Kareem Hummadi AL-Rikabi

i

Permission to Use

In presenting this dissertation in fulfilment of the requirements for a Master of Science

in Information Technology (MSc. IT) from Universiti Utara Malaysia, I agree that the

Universiti Library may make it freely available for inspection. I further agree that

permission for the copying of this dissertation in any manner, in whole or in part, for

scholarly purpose may be granted by my supervisor or, in their absence, by the Dean of

Awang Had Salleh Graduate School of Arts and Sciences. It is understood that any

copying or publication or use of this dissertation or parts thereof for financial gain shall

not be allowed without my written permission. It is also understood that due

recognition shall be given to me and to Universiti Utara Malaysia for any scholarly use

which may be made of any material from my dissertation.

Requests for permission to copy or to make other use of materials in this dissertation, in

whole or in part, should be addressed to:

Dean of Awang Had Salleh Graduate School of Arts and Sciences

UUM College of Arts and Sciences

Universiti Utara Malaysia

06010 UUM Sintok

Kedah Darul Aman

ii

Abstrak

Nod-nod Rangkaian Sensor Tanpa Wayar (WSN) digunakan secara meluas dalam

pelbagai sector. Nod-nod ini walaubagaimananpun berdepan dengan pelbagai masalah

pengoperasian khususnya pelanggaran paket data, nod terlindung dan lain-lain yang

memberikan impak besar ke atas jangka hayat bateri. Nod-nod WSN amat bergantung

ke atas jangkahayat baterinya dan penambahan kuasa bateri nod-nod ini adalah sukar

kerana nod-nod kerapkali tersusun dalam keadaan ad-hoc. Oleh demikian, kuasa bateri

dalam nod-nod WSN menjadi factor penting dalam kebolehgunaannya. Satu

pendekatan untuk menjimatkan penggunaan kuasa ialah merekabentuk protokol

Medium Access Control (MAC). Kajian terdahulu telah dijalankan untuk mengatasi

masalah yang memberi kesan ke atas jangkahayat bateri. Disertasi ini bertujuan

merekabentuk protokol MAC hybrid, Energy Efficient MAC (EE-MAC) untuk

mengatasi masalah yang berkaiatan penggunaan kuasa oleh nod-nod WSN. EE-MAC

mampu mengurangkan masalah idle-listening serta mempercepatkan masa

penghantaran data sekaligus menjimatkan kuasa. EE-MAC dibangunkan menggunakan

simulator ns-2. Keberkesanan protokol ini disahkan menggunakan model matematik

serta dibandingkan dengan piawaian IEEE 802.11 Power Saving Mode (PSM).

Simulasi yang dijalankan menunjukkan protokol yang dicadangkan mencapai prestasi

yang lebih baik berbanding IEEE 802.11 PSM.

iii

Abstract

Wireless Sensor Network (WSN) nodes are broadly used in various sectors

nowadays. WSN nodes experience a lot of problems that impact on battery life for

sensor node such as, overhearing, collision, hidden node, idle listening, schedule drifts,

and high latency. Moreover, WSN nodes are strongly dependent on its limited battery

power, and replenishing it again is difficult as nodes are organized in an ad-hoc

manner. Energy consumption is the most vital factor to determine the life of a sensor

network because sensor nodes are driven by low battery resources. An approach to

conserve energy in WSN nodes is to carefully design its Medium Access Control

(MAC) protocol. Several previous work has been carried out to mitigate many

problems that impact on battery life for sensor node such as overhearing, collision, and

hidden node. This dissertation attempts to design, a hybrid Energy-Efficient MAC (EE-

MAC) protocol to address the energy issues that are related to WSN nodes. This

protocol aims to reduce idle listening times as well as lowering the latency time thus

reducing the energy consumption. The proposed protocol has been developed and

analysed using the ns-2 simulator. A mathematical model was used to verify and prove

the efficiency of the proposed protocol. We have compared our proposed EE-MAC

protocol with the existing contention-based IEEE 802.11 PSM protocol. The simulation

results illustrate EE-MAC has achieved better energy conservation than the IEEE

802.11 PSM protocol.

Keywords: EE-MAC, WSN, Medium Access Control, Energy-efficiency, ns-2, IEEE

802.11 PSM.

iv

Acknowledgement

“In the name of Allah the Most Beneficent and Most Merciful”

All praises and thanks to the Almighty, Allah (SWT), who helped me to finish this

dissertation. Allah gave me the opportunity, strength and the ability to complete my

study for Master degree after a long continuous work. I would like to express my

gratitude and special appreciation to my supervisors, Mr. Suwannit Chareen Chit and

Dr. Mohd. Hasbullah Omar, who have been tremendous mentor for me. I would like to

thank you both for encouraging and advising in both research as well as my career have

been priceless.

I sincerely thank my evaluators, Dr. Mohd Nizam Omar and Dr. Shahrudin bin

Awang Nor, and thanks to Dr. Norliza Binti Katuk, Dr. Faudziah Binti Ahmad, and

other committee members, for graciously reviewing this work and giving me valuable

suggestion and comments for my work. I am indebted and thankful to all Malaysian

people who are very friendly and make us feel that we are not strangers in Malaysia.

Last but not least, the words cannot express my gratitude to my family, especially

my dear father who is my teacher, friend, philosopher all in one who supported me in

all ups and downs. My mother for her infallible love and support emotionally, my twin

soul dear brother Mohammed Abu-jaafar and my other dear brothers, Ali, Hussain,

Abbas, Hassan and sisters. The patience and understanding shown by my wife and my

sons Sajjad and Muntadhar during these years is greatly appreciated. Words cannot

describe their constant love, care, concern, patience, throughout the two years of my

study abroad. I am forever thankful, grateful, and indebted to all of them.

I dedicate the accomplishment of this dissertation to my dear father my affectionate

mother, and to the twin of my spirit, my dear brother Mohammed.

"Thank you UUM"

Yasser AL-Rikabi

v

Table of Contents

Permission to Use ................................................................................................................. i

Abstrak……………………………………………………………………………….……ii

Abstract ........................................................................................................................ …..iii

Acknowledgement ............................................................................................................ iiv

Table of Contents .........................................................................................………v

List of Tables .................................................................................................................... vii

List of Figures .................................................................................................................. viii

List of Appendices ............................................................................................................ ix

List of Abbreviations…..…………………………………………….…………….……....x

CHAPTER ONE ............................................................................................................ ..1

1.0 Introduction ................................................................................................................... 1

1.1 Background ................................................................................................................... 3

1.2 Problem Statement ........................................................................................................ 5

1.3 Research Questions ....................................................................................................... 7

1.4 Research Objectives ...................................................................................................... 7

1.5 Motivation ..................................................................................................................... 7

1.6 Contributions ................................................................................................................. 8

1.7 Scope ............................................................................................................................. 9

CHAPTER TWO .................................................................................................10

2.0 Introduction ................................................................................................................. 10

2.1 Medium Access Control Protocol ............................................................................... 10

2.1.1 Contention-Based Protocols ................................................................................ 11

2.1.2 Scheduled-Based Protocols ................................................................................. 12

2.1.3 Hybrid-Based Protocols ...................................................................................... 12

2.1.3.1 Zebra-MAC (Z-MAC) Protocol ............................................................................ 13

2.1.3.2 Wireless Sensor MAC (WiseMAC) Protocol ....................................................... 15

2.1.3.3 Crankshaft Protocol ............................................................................................... 18

vi

2.1.3.4 Asynchronous Scheduled MAC (AS-MAC) Protocol .......................................... 20

2.2 Related Studies ............................................................................................................ 26

2.3 Primary Causes of Energy Wastage in WSN ...................................................31

2.4 Conclusion .................................................................................................................. 33

CHAPTER THREE .............................................................................................34

3.0 Introduction ................................................................................................................. 34

3.1 Understand the protocols and design (EE-MAC) protocol ......................................... 36

3.2 Implement (EE-MAC) protocol and analysis.............................................................. 36

3.2.1 Pseudo Code…………………………………………………………………….38

3.2.2 Mechanism of the EE-MAC Procedure work. ................................... ………….40

3.3 Evaluation ................................................................................................................... 42

3.4 Summary ..................................................................................................................... 43

CHAPTER FOUR ......................................................................................................... 44

4.0 Introduction ................................................................................................................. 44

4.1 Simulation Setup and Parameters ................................................................................ 44

4.2 Performance Metrics ................................................................................................... 46

4.3 Design Energy Efficient MAC (EE-MAC) Protocol .................................................. 48

4.3.1 Scheduling…………………………………………………………………………49

CHAPTER FIVE ........................................................................................................... 53

5.0 Introduction ................................................................................................................. 53

5.1 Analysis Performance Results of EE-MAC Protocol ................................................. 53

5.2 EE-MAC Performance Evaluation .............................................................................. 57

5.3 Energy Saving ............................................................................................................. 62

5.4 Discussion of Results .................................................................................................. 65

CHAPTER SIX .....................................................................................................67

6.0 Conclusion .................................................................................................................. 67

6.1 Research Contributions ............................................................................................... 68

6.2 Future Work .............................................................................................................. 688

REFERENCES.................................................................................................................. 69

vii

List of Tables

Table 2.1: Advantages and disadvantages of hybrid MAC protocols…………............……….24

Table 2.2: Summary of related research studies……………………………………………......32

Table 3.1: The mechanism of the EE-MAC procedure work ...……………………..................40

Table 4.1: Simulation parameters and setup……………………….…………………….……..45

Table 5.1: Simulation results of EE-MAC and IEEE 802.11 PSM protocols…………….…....56

viii

List of Figures

Figure 1.1: A Typical Wireless Sensor Node and Its Architecture…………….………….….....4

Figure 2.1: The WiseMAC concept………………………………………………….…………17

Figure 2.2: Contention and Message Exchange in Crankshaft……………….………………...19

Figure 2.3: Initialization phase finding its offset……………………………….………………21

Figure 2.4: Communication at Hello time………………………………………….…………..22

Figure 2.5: Communication at wakeup time……………………………………………….…...23

Figure 3.1: Methods and the main outcomes encapsulated in the research framework….…….35

Figure 3.2: Algorithmic form of EE-MAC procedure………………………………………….37

Figure 4.1: The EE-MAC Procedure……………………………………………………….…..50

Figure 4.2: The EE-MAC scheduling procedure…………………………………………….…52

Figure 5.1: Implementation of Sensor node for EE-MAC protocol……………………………54

Figure 5.2: Implementation of Sensor node for IEEE 802.11 PSM protocol...…………...........55

Figure 5.3: Packets delivery ratio for EE-MAC and IEEE 802.11 PSM.....................................58

Figure 5.4: Dropping Ratio for EE-MAC and IEEE 802.11 PSM…………………..……..…..59

Figure 5.5: Throughput for EE-MAC and IEEE 802.11 PSM………………….………...…....60

Figure 5.6: Jitter for EE-MAC and IEEE 802.11 PSM…………………………………..…….61

Figure 5.7: Average Energy Consumption for EE-MAC and IEEE 802.11 PSM………..…….63

Figure 5.8: Normalized routing overheads for EE-MAC and IEEE 802.11 PSM.......................64

ix

List of Appendices

Appendix A The Snapshots to Implement Sensor node for Hybrid (EE-MAC) Protocol…......74

Appendix B The Snapshots to Implement Sensor node for IEEE 802.11 PSM protocol……...80

x

List of Abbreviations

ACK Acknowledgment

AS-MAC Asynchronous Scheduled MAC

B-MAC Berkeley-MAC

CCA Clear Channel Assessment

CSMA/CD Carrier Sense Multiple Access/ Collision Detection

CSMA/CA Carries Sense Multiple Access/Collision Avoidance

DRAND Distributed Randomized

EB-MAC Event Based MAC

ECN Explicit Congestion Notification

EE-MAC Energy Efficient MAC

HCL High Contention Level

LCL Low Contention Level

LPL Low Power Listening

MAC Medium Access Control

μOS Micro Operating System

P-MAC Pattern-MAC

PSM Power save Mode

RSS Received Signal Strength

TDMA Time Division Multiple Access

WiseMAC Wireless Sensor MAC

WSN Wireless Sensor Network

Z-MAC Zebra-MAC

1

CHAPTER ONE

INTRODUCTION

1.0 Introduction

Wireless Sensor Network (WSN) nodes are compact-sized, low-power

autonomous devices with wireless communication capabilities that are widely used in

various real world applications today. Advancement in technology world wide witness

applications of WSN nodes in various pace of life, such as military, health care,

environmental issues and many more which needs monitoring. These nodes are

basically used in various sectors which need close monitoring, hence deployed in a

sensor field to measure environmental conditions such as temperature, pressure,

humidity, movement, etc. WSN nodes are powered by limited power sources and often

exhibit strong dependency on battery life making replenishment an arduous or

impossible task as most nodes are positioned in an ad-hoc manner. Energy in WSN

node, though often insufficient and limited in supply, is the most important parameter

that determines the WSN lifetime. In designing a WSN energy efficiency is required,

and the radio is distinguished as a main source of the power consumption in sensor

nodes (Jang, Lim, & Sichitiu, 2013).

In WSN operation, energy can be dissipated by either “useful” or “wasteful”

means. For example, as a part of useful operation, node requires energy to transmit or

receive data messages, and processes query requests through which energy is

consumed. On the contrary, energy consumption by means of overhearing,

retransmitting due to rough environment, handling with the redundant broadcast

overhead messages, as well as idle listening to the media are wasteful energy

The contents of

the thesis is for

internal user

only

69

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