Optimization and Verification of the TR-MAC Protocol for Wireless Sensor Networks
Energy-efficiency is an important requirement in the design of communication protocols for wireless sensor networks (WSN). TR-MAC is an energy-efficient medium access control (MAC) layer protocol for low power WSN that exploits transmitted-reference (TR) modulation in the physical layer. The underlying TR modulation in TR-MAC provides faster synchronization and signal acquisition without requiring channel estimation and complex rake receiver in the receiver side. TR modulation also enables multiple access for a pair of nodes using different frequency offsets. This paper introduces an explicit expression that allows the TR-MAC protocol to minimize its energy consumption, depending on the experienced traffic load. Furthermore, an implementation of the protocol in the OMNeT++ simulator with MiXiM simulation framework is introduced, and analytical results introduced in [13] are verified by simulation results obtained using the simulator.