An energy-efficient communication system for ad hoc wireless and sensor networks

Abstract

Existing ad hoc wireless and sensor network systems often trade off energy against performance. As such, it is hard to find a single deployable system that supports high data rates while maintaining energy-efficient operation. This research addresses the problem by designing a communication system that achieves high performance and reduces the energy needed for delivering data in multi-hop networks by a factor of 100 or more over IEEE 802.11. The system is composed of a duty cycling and pseudo-random Medium Access Control (MAC) that provides deterministic access to the shared medium. Furthermore, the MAC provides link level QOS to support high data rates required for real-time traffic as well as delay-bounded services such as voice and multi-media streaming.