Energy Efficient Radio Cognition Based MAC Protocol for Wireless Sensor Network

1. INTRODUCTION
1.1 Background of the Problem: Sensor network is essentially a wireless network that contains large number of interconnected nodes that have processing and communication capability along with sensing power (for example sensing power of light, heat, motion, pressure etc.). The deployment of such a network is similar to an ad-hoc network where there is no fixed infrastructure and each node acts as a sensor as well as an end device or a router depending on the need of the network at a given time. These nodes are typically battery powered and often it is impractical to recharge the batteries up while a node runs short of power. Hence reducing the consumption of energy as much as possible is a prime research issue in such networks. 1.2 Statement of the Problem: In a wireless network energy can be consumed through collision, overhearing, idle listening or overhead problems. All these problems arise for the sake of getting access to the channel and for establishing a communication path between sender and receiver. TDMA and its variant channel access methods give a deterministic access method to the nodes while the carrier sensing method and its variants provide the chance of access the channel in a stochastic fashion where the sensor nodes try to access the channel with contention mechanism. Both of these techniques and their variants are successful in saving energy to a considerable degree. But the question that whether a knowledge base medium access method can save energy is yet to be explored widely. 1.3 Objectives of the Study: The prime aim of this study is to explore and design energy efficient MAC protocol with the help of knowledge or cognition of the network and nodes. The knowledge can be built on the basis of sensing, classifying and adapting the various parameters of the network and as well as of the nodes with the help of radio knowledge representation related languages such as RKRL. 1.4 Scope of the Study: There has been extensive works on MAC (Medium Access Control) protocols for multi hop wireless networks. These MAC can be categorized as contention based or schedule based. All of those protocols have given emphasize on saving energy of the node through either by giving variations in sensing technique or applying basic TDMA channel access technology variants. But still the question of whether we can use cognition of the network and the nodes for energy saving is not examined up to the point. 1.5 Significance of the Study: Sensor network has proven its worth to be explored for its wide applicability. On the other hand Cognitive radio from its very beginning has proven its utility in wireless networking. With cognition in mind there have been very extended works in many of the

research field today for example in www, machine learning and artificial intelligence. Similarly, cognition in MAC protocol for sensor network can play a very important role in saving precious energy in sensor nodes. That is why this research is indispensable.

2. LITERATURE REVIEW
2.1 Relevant Research Works: A very good number of related researches have been done so far. The aim of some of the MAC protocols is to do away with the consumption of energy due to idle listening by scheduling the nodes to go to sleep state while they are not transmitting or any other node is not intending to send them traffic. S-MAC [1] and some of its variant algorithms proposed a duty cycle for sleep and wake time with a time synchronization method. Only at the wake up time a node can transmit or receive packets. In the power saving mode of IEEE 802.11 DCF nodes sleep periodically. The drawbacks with these protocols are that channel congestion increases since all the packets concentrate for the specific wake-up period to communicate. DMAC [2] is designed to reduce energy consumption by reducing end to end latency applying the technique of scheduling transmission. TDMA based MAC protocols are inherently efficient for collision free communication and can efficiently reduce energy consumption that happens because of idle listening. The major issues in these sorts of protocols are proper time slot allocation among the contenders and synchronization among the nodes. Several protocols have been proposed based on TDMA so far. Some of those are sender driven and some others are receiver driven. The prime objective is to let the nodes be in sleep mode while they are not transmitting or receiving data so that the nodes can save energy. TDMA-W [3] allocates two time slots for each node, one for data transmission and the other is for wake up to receive control packets. In LMAC [4], the nodes always listen for control data as in this case each slot contains both control information and data. TRAMA [5] uses traffic information to sporadically construct and exchange traffic timetable which holds information of the time slots that they will wake up and perform data transmission task. It also contains the information about the intended receiver. This is how TRAMA achieves high channel utilization. Still high delay persists with this protocol. This protocol is complex compared to other related protocols too. Z-MAC [6], another TDMA based MAC protocol, also make use of the technique assigned slot but it also allows the nodes to contend for slots which are not used at a particular time. For this to achieve the contending node use the back-off time strategy. With this technique this protocol gains high channel utilization. However, this protocol suffers with high overhead problem because it needs to maintain a lot of control information to get those extra benefits. RMAC [7], which is a receiver driven MAC protocol, works in 3 states to formulate its job: neighbor discovery phase, time slot allocation phase and scheduled data transmission phase. The nodes, which are assigned with time slots in phase 2, assume themselves as the receiver and they selects sender among the other nodes. The author introduced a method called timeslot stealing if a node needs more time slot to send data and in that particular time slot the designated receiver-sender pair has nothing to communicate then that slot is provided to the node which need it. Though this protocol shows high performance with the timeslot stealing strategy, it still incurs delay.

2.2

Method to be implemented: The idea that saving energy by using cognition of the wireless sensor network has not been explored well yet. Energy can be wasted because of collisions, overhearing, idle listening, overhead etc. In literature there have been very few cognitive radio MAC protocol proposed so far. Energy efficient multichannel cognitive radio protocol (ECR-MAC) [8] uses TDMA technique to preserve energy of the node and along with this it uses a small window at the start of each interval for additional sensing time. CR enabled multi-channel MAC protocol over DSA network (CREAM_MAC) [9] introduced integrated cooperative sequential spectrum sensing at physical layer to enhance the sensing performance, decrease the number of collision and packet scheduling at MAC layer but did not, however, discuss energy saving issue. In EECR-MAC [11], the author proposed an adaptive aggression technique that combines higher layer packets to minimize the amount of overhead and thus reduce overall energy consumption in a cognitive radio network. Using cognition of the network it is possible to understand and know about the current status of the network and accordingly it is possible to adapt the nodes future actions. So sensing comes prior to classification and adaptation of cognition cycle. Energy consumption using TDMA based different protocols incur delay in some extend or gives additional burden of time synchronization or reveals overload of traffic in some cases. On the other hand CSMA based protocols increases collision probability along with demands for listening for traffic all the time which requires more energy. A node, provided with cognition of the radio and itself, can better understand about the current condition of the network, whether a channel is busy or not or the node can adapt its power amplifier, coding method and modulation technique and many more to minimize energy consumption. Further, by using cognition a node can select the best congestion free channel which can be used for saving energy. The question can come In front that sensing channels and building up knowledge base to achieve cognition of the network a node can over run its existing power. To argue with this issue, author in [10] shows a comparison between traditional network and cognitive network which reveals that cognitive radio is more energy efficient than conventional networks.

3. RESEARCH METHODOLOGY 3.1 Research Design and Procedure: It has always been a very good strategy to divide a problem into blocks, work on those blocks and eventually conquer the overall problem through solving each block independently. So the strategy to study this topic can be as follows: a. Study of existing MAC protocols and explore their energy saving techniques to understand clearly the advances and finding out the block holes in those. b. Study the cognitive radio technology and its applications in MAC protocols, where are the scopes to apply CR for energy saving.

c. Study and analyze the radio representation languages and other knowledge representation languages to find out the questions what, how and where to apply those tools in learning environment; specifically for the purpose of energy saving in resource allocation. d. Having retrieving necessary data simulation can be done with a powerful simulator like MATLAB. Also it would be necessary to compare the result of simulation with those of the traditional MAC protocols and the proposed knowledge based method of resource allocation. e. Finally a conclusion can be drawn with the achieved results. 3.2 Subjects of Data Sources: Since this research will keep an eye on the cognition of the radio environment as well as the nodes themselves to make a knowledgebase for optimum resource allocation and communication, these subjects are the data sources. 3.3 Instrumentation and Data Analysis: As this research work will be simulation based, MATLAB simulator can be a very good choice for its simplicity and dynamism. MATLAB simulator has been proven successful in computer and communication research and in many other research fields. Its diverse functions can be handful and enough for this research. But the modification or formalization of RKRL or similar cognition based languages need to be studied thoroughly. 3.4 Assumptions & Limitations: The Radio Knowledge Representation Language and other knowledge representation languages are not studied well. Also it is unclear about how and specifically where those languages should be used. How these knowledge representation languages can play a role in energy saving during resource allocation is also unknown. Still it is assumed, with strong intuition, that these techniques can be a strong tool to make the proposed MAC protocol energy efficient. 3.5 Research Planning and Scheduling: The following table indicates the weighting of each part of the proposed thesis in percentage term, the topics covered and importantly the approximate length of time it will take to complete them. Chapter 1 2 3 4 5 total Topic introduction Literature review Methodology Data analysis and simulation Conclusion and Implication % 5 30 25 25 15 100 Moths 3 7 3 6 5 24

4. EXPECTED FINDINGS AND SUMMARY Surveying the related research outcomes, it is found that in [7] the author achieved an average of just below 40 mW of power consumption per packet with their timeslot stealing mechanism where the numbers of frames were considered to be 50 and the simulation time was from 200-1800 seconds. In

[11] the author shows a comparative result of energy consumption reduction among some of the CR based protocols like CREAM-MAC, OC-MAC and DSA-MAC. The result shows that with adaptive aggregation technique, it saves 5.56% energy compared to others. However it does not show the energy consumption rate. It is expected that with complete knowledge base algorithm, the system can significantly reduce the energy consumption rate, compared to the existing protocols, though the technique is prone to consume energy because of spectrum sensing and other computations required.

5. REFERENCES 1. W. Ye, J. Heidemann, D. Estrin, Medium access control with coordinated adaptive sleeping for wireless sensor networks, IEEE/ACM Transactions on Networking 12 (2004) 493506. 2. L. Gang, B. Krishnamachari, C. Raghavendra, An adaptive energy-efficient and low-latency MAC for data gathering in sensor networks, in: Procs. of the 4th International Workshop on Algorithms for Wireless, Mobile, Ad Hoc and Sensor Networks, WMAN 04, 2004. 3. Z. Chen, A. Khokhar, Self-organization and energy efficient TDMA MAC protocol by wake up for wireless sensor networks, in: Procs. of the 1st IEEE Sensor and Ad Hoc Communications and Networks, SECON, Conference, 2004. 4. L.F.W. van Hoesel, P.J.M. Havinga, A lightweight, medium access protocol (LMAC) for wireless sensor networks, in: Procs. of the 2004 International Conference on Networked Sensing Systems, INSS, 2004. 5. V. Rajendran, K. Obraczka, J.J. Garcia-Luna-Aceves, Energy-efficient, collision-free medium access control for wireless sensor networks, ACM/Kluwer Wireless Networks 12 (2006) 63 78. 6. I. Rhee, A. Warrier, M. Aia, J. Min, M.L. Sichitiu, Z-MAC: a hybrid MAC for wireless sensor networks, IEEE/ACM Transactions on Networking 16 (2008) 511524. 7. W. L. Tan, W. C. Lau, O. Yue, Performance Analysis of an Adaptive, Energy-efficient MAC Protocol for Wireless Sensor Networks, J. Parallel Distrib. Compute. 72 (2012)504-514 S.M. Kamruzzaman. An Energy Efficient Multichannel MAC Protocol for Cognitive Radio Ad Hoc Networks, International Journal of Communication Networks and Information Security, vol. 2, No. 2, Aug. 2010. H. Su, X. Zhang, CREAM-MAC: An efficient cognitive radio-enabled multi-channel MAC protocol for wireless networks, IEEE Journal of selected topics in Signal processing, Vol. 5, No. 1, Feb 2011.

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10. A. Badruddoza, V. Namboodiri,N. Jaggi, On the Energy Efficiency of Cognitive Radios-A Study of the Ad Hoc Wireless LAN Scenario, IEEEXplore, July 2011 11. F.F. Qureshi, Energy Efficient Cognitive Radio MAC Protocol for Adhoc Networks, Wireless Telecommunication Symposium (WTS),2012