Efficient Power Management Based on a Distributed Queuing MAC for Wireless Sensor Networks

Significant power is consumed at a sensor node when it either transmits a packet or when it receives a packet. In this paper, the authors study energy efficiency as a function of the number of sensors in the network and the payload length. Additionally, they propose power management solutions based on a distributed queuing MAC protocol for wireless sensor networks. Analytical values for the energy consumption performance are derived as a function of the system parameters. The obtained results show that their proposed MAC scheme outperforms that of IEEE 802.15.4. These benefits are obtained from eliminating back-off periods and collisions in data packet transmissions while minimizing the control overhead and the overall energy consumption.