Fakultät Informatik – Institut für Systemarchitektur – Professur Rechnernetze

Energy-saving MAC
Protocols for WSN

Xiaojuan Chao
Weiwei Wu

Supervisor: Dr. Waltenegus Dargie

 Outline

• Background and Motivation

• Overview of Energy-saving MAC:CSMA &S-MAC
• Adaptive MAC :T-MAC Design
• Experiment and Comparison
• Conclusion and Limitations
• Discussion

TU Dresden, 28.11.06 Energy saving MAC slide 2 of33

Fakultät Informatik – Institut für Systemarchitektur – Professur Rechnernetze

Background and Motivation

 Background
MAC layer (media access control ) in WLAN:
is described by a MAC protocol, which tries to ensure that
no two nodes are interfering with each other’s transmissions,
and deals with the situation when they do.

• Traditional MAC Protocols

– Design to maximize packet throughput, minimize latency and
provide fairness

• Protocol Design for Wireless Sensor Networks

– focuses on minimizing energy consumption
– Fairness not a issue!

TU Dresden, 28.11.06 Energy saving MAC slide 4 of33

 Motivation:
Major Sources of Energy Overhead
Idle-Listening
—listening to receive messages while no message sent.
Example:
on average: 1 sensor node in per second:
5ms on transmitting message
5ms on receiving message
990ms on listening while nothing happens
99% of the time doing nothing!!!
Collisions – wasted effort when two packets collide
Overhearing – waste effort in receiving a packet destined
for another node waste
Protocol overhead –control packet transmission/receiving
TU Dresden, 28.11.06 Energy saving MAC slide 5 of33
Fakultät Informatik – Institut für Systemarchitektur – Professur Rechnernetze

Overview of Energy-saving
MAC:CSMA &S-MAC
 Overview of Classical MAC
802.11 MAC protocols : CSMA/CA
SENSES the medium (channel):

– IF IDLE Æ waits to see if the channel remains idle for a time

interval. If so, the station may transmit immediately.
– IF BUSY Æ the station defers transmission and continues to
senses the channel until the current transmission is over.
– If Collisions (Control or Data) Æ Binary exponential increase
(doubling) of CW; Length of back-off time is exponentially
increased as the station goes through successive
retransmissions.
– use RTS/CTS handshake to avoid collision
RTS: Request to Send, CTS :Clear to Send
But Waste a lot of energy by idle-listening!

TU Dresden, 28.11.06 Energy saving MAC slide 7 of33

 Overview of S-MAC (Sensor MAC)

• Problem: “Idle Listening” consumes significant energy

• Solution: Periodic listen and sleep

Duty cycle:
ratio of listen
interval to the
[1]
frame length
• During sleeping, radio is turned off
• Reduce duty cycle to ~ 10% (Listen for 120ms and sleep for 2s)
Latency Energy

It uses synchronization to form virtual clusters of nodes on the

same sleep schedule ,which could minimize additional latency.
TU Dresden, 28.11.06 Energy saving MAC slide 8 of33
 S-MAC (contd.)
• Collision Avoidance
– Similar to 802.11 CSMA/CA (RTS/CTS handshake).

• Overhearing Avoidance
– Sleep when neighbors talk ,switching the radio off when the
transmission is not meant for that node
9 Who should sleep?
9 All immediate neighbors of the sender and receiver
9 How long to sleep?
9 The duration field in each packet informs other nodes for the
sleep interval

• Protocol Overhead
– Message Passing S-MAC fragments message into small packets
and transmit them as a burst
– Only one RTS and one CTS packets are used and it reserves the
medium for the entire message
TU Dresden, 28.11.06 Energy saving MAC slide 9 of33
 S-MAC Conclusion

• Advantage:
– Messages are packed into the active part, the energy
wasted on idle listening, is reduced.
• Disadvantage:
– Throughput is reduced because only the active part of
the frame is used for communication.
– Latency increases because a message-generating event
may occur during sleep time.
S-MAC fixed duty cycle – is NOT OPTIMAL
for different node and time

TU Dresden, 28.11.06 Energy saving MAC slide 10 of33

Fakultät Informatik – Institut für Systemarchitektur – Professur Rechnernetze

Adaptive Energy-Efficient
MAC Procotol:T-MAC
 T-MAC Protocol Design

[1]

Experience from S-MAC, the nodes must be deployed with an active time
that can handle the highest expected load. Whenever the load is lower
than that, the active time is not optimally used and energy will be wasted
on idle listening.

Improve in T-MAC, transmitting all messages in bursts of variable

length, and sleeping between bursts.

To maintain an optimal active time under variable load, it dynamically

determine its length. and end the active time in an intuitive way:
--simply time out on hearing nothing. (TA)
TU Dresden, 28.11.06 Energy saving MAC slide 12 of36
 Basic protocol
Rules:
1. Every node periodically wakes up to communicate with its neighbors, and
then goes to sleep again until the next frame.

2. New messages are queued .

3. Communication scheme: Request-To-Send (RTS), Clear-To-Send (CTS),
Data, Acknowledgement (ACK)
A contend RTS CTS Data ACK

TA
4. An active period ends when no activation event has occurred for a time TA.

TU Dresden, 28.11.06 Energy saving MAC slide 13 of36

 Clustering and synchronzation
Original Propuse:
,
The listen/sleep scheme requires synchronization among neighboring nodes means neighboring
nodes need to periodically update each other their schedules to prevent long-time clock drift.

SYNC
B

Results:
Nodes must start a data transmission only at the start of their own active time. At that
time, both neighbors with the same schedule, and neighbors that have adopted the
schedule as extra, are awake. If a node would start transmission at the start of a
neighbor’s frame, it might be transmitting to another, sleeping neighbor.

TU Dresden, 28.11.06 Energy saving MAC slide 14 of36

 Fixed contention interval
When traffic is higher:
Usually, a back-off scheme is used, the contention interval
increases when traffic is higher.

T-MAC protocol, An increasing contention interval is not useful,

since the load is mostly high and does not change. Therefore, RTS
transmission in T-MAC starts by waiting and listening for a
random time within a fixed contention interval.

TU Dresden, 28.11.06 Energy saving MAC slide 15 of36

 RTS retries
Background :
When the sending node receives no answer within the interval TA, it
might go to sleep.
Problems:
it might be not the correct when :
1. the receiving node has not heard the RTS due to collision;
2. the receiving node is prohibited from an overheard RTS or CTS
Result:
the sending node goes to sleep, while the receiving node is still awake
Solution:
re-sending the RTS if it receives no answer.

TU Dresden, 28.11.06 Energy saving MAC slide 16 of36

 Determining TA
Requirement: a node should not sleep while its
neighbors are communicating, potential next
receiver
TA > C+R+T
– C – contention interval length;
– R – RTS packet length;
– T – turn-around time. end of RTS and start of CTS;

The best way:

TA = 1.5 * (C+R+T);

TU Dresden, 28.11.06 Energy saving MAC slide 17 of36

 Asymmetric Communication (1)
• Early-Sleeping Problem – in convergecast (A to D)
• C – may lose medium to B (RTS) or A (B’s CTS)
• C loses to B; D will hear CTS from C;
• C loses to A; D will hear nothing, since C is silent;

contend RTS CTS DATA ACK

A

contend
C

active sleep
D
RTS? [1]
TA

TU Dresden, 28.11.06 Energy saving MAC slide 18 of36

 Asymmetric Communication (2)
Future RTS (FRTS)
• Let others know that it cannot access the medium; C – sends FRTS –
has duration field; receiver of FRTS – schedule timer;
• FRTS might affect data; so, DATA postponed until FRTS is over;
Prevent others from taking medium, send dummy DS packet;

contend RTS CTS DS DATA ACK

A

contend
C

active active
D
FRTS RTS [1]
TA
TA = C+R+T+CTS_length

TU Dresden, 28.11.06 Energy saving MAC slide 19 of36

 Asymmetric Communication (3)
Full-Buffer Priority – suitable for unidirectional flows
• Buffer – almost full – prefer sending than receiving
• Receive RTS, send its own RTS back instead of CTS
• Higher chance of transmitting its own message, lesser probability of
early-sleeping, limited form of flow control

contend
A

contend
B

contend
C
RTS
active
D [1]
RTS CTS DATA ACK
TU Dresden, 28.11.06 Energy saving MAC slide 20 of36
Fakultät Informatik – Institut für Systemarchitektur – Professur Rechnernetze

Experiment and Comparison

 Experiment Framework
• Simulator: OMNeT++
• Built a static network of 100 EYES nodes in a 10 by 10 grid
• Energy Consumption of nodes
• S-MAC protocol
– A frame length of one second,
and with several lengths of the
active time, varying from
75 ms to 915 ms. [1]
• T-MAC protocol
– Always used a frame length of 610ms and an interval TA
with a length of 15 ms
– Can optionally be deployed with overhearing avoidance,
full-buffer priority, and FRTS

TU Dresden, 28.11.06 Energy saving MAC slide 22 of33

 Communication Patterns
• Local unicast/broadcast
– In –networking processing
– Nodes send packets to one of their neighbors at random
• Nodes-to-sink communication

– Nodes send messages to a single sink node to report

• Shortest path routing, no data aggregation
– T-MAC: Used overhearing avoidance, FRTS or full-
buffer priority mechanisms

TU Dresden, 28.11.06 Energy saving MAC slide 23 of33

 Homogeneous Local Unicast

Send one packet

to a random neighbor.

T-MAC:
Overhearing Avoidance,
no FRTS or priority over
full-buffers.

[1]
TU Dresden, 28.11.06 Energy saving MAC slide 24 of33
 Nodes to Sink Communication

Send message to
corner node;
Shortest path routing;
No data aggregation;

T-MAC:
Overhearing Avoidance,
FRTS & Full-buffer priority

[1]
TU Dresden, 28.11.06 Energy saving MAC slide 25 of33
 Early-Sleeping Problem & Solutions
Performance

Send message to
corner node;
Shortest path routing;
No data aggregation;

T-MAC:
FRTS
Vs. Priority
Vs. FRTS + Priority
Vs. No measures

Throughput increased at
the value of some energy [1]
TU Dresden, 28.11.06 Energy saving MAC slide 26 of33
 Event-Based Local Unicast

Event occurs frequency 10s;

Event duration 5s;
Affect 9 nodes;
Send local unicast to
their neighbors.
Nbrs. reply with 20%
probability;

T-MAC: OA, no FRTS &

Full-buffer priority

[1]

TU Dresden, 28.11.06 Energy saving MAC slide 27 of33

 Complete scenario with both periodic
reporting and event-based messages.

No event, xchg local msgs.

(10bytes) every 20s; report
sink every 100s;
Event frequency 10s;
Event duration 5s;
Local unicast (30bytes) /4S;
To sink (50bytes) /s;

S-MATC 715ms for active

Shortest path routing;
Data aggregation;
T-MAC: OA, no FRTS &
Full-buffer priority
[1]
TU Dresden, 28.11.06 Energy saving MAC slide 28 of33
Fakultät Informatik – Institut für Systemarchitektur – Professur Rechnernetze

Conclusion and Limitations

 Conclusion
• Simulations have shown that the T-MAC protocol
introduces a way of decreasing energy consumption
when the message rate fluctuates, either in time or
in location.
– During a high load, nodes communicate without sleeping
– During a very low load, nodes will use their radios for as
little as 2.5% of the time, saving as much as 96% of the
energy compared to a traditional MAC
• T-MAC dynamically adapts a listen/sleep duty cycle
through fine-grained timeouts, while having
minimum complexity.

TU Dresden, 28.11.06 Energy saving MAC slide 30 of33

 Limitations

• Only experimented with a static, non-mobile

network
• Synchronization /virtual clusters/multi-hop are
not researched thoroughly
• Some experiments not implement all features to
confirm the realistic T-MAC peak throughput

TU Dresden, 28.11.06 Energy saving MAC slide 31 of33

 References
[1]An Adaptive Energy-Efficient MAC Protocol for
Wireless Sensor Networks (paper and slides)
Tijs van Dam Koen Langendoen
[2]Comparing Energy-Saving MAC Protocols for Wireless
Sensor Networks
G.P. HALKES, T. VAN DAM and K.G. LANGENDOEN
[3] An energy-efficient MAC protocol for wireless sensor
networks
Wei Ye; Heidemann, J.; Estrin, D.
[4] MAC protocol slides on
http://www.ece.gatech.edu/research/labs/bwn/
[5] Wiki

TU Dresden, 28.11.06 Energy saving MAC slide 32 of33

 Thank you
&
Discussion
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