An Ultra-Low Power and Distributed Access Protocol for Broadband Wireless Sensor Networks

Lizhi Charlie Zhong, Rahul Shah, Chunlong Guo, Jan Rabaey

 IEEE Broadband Wireless Summit, Las Vegas, N.V., May 2001.

An ultra-low power access control scheme has been proposed for broadband wireless sensor networks. This is a distributed method, which does not require the existence of a central base station, eliminating the possibility of a single point failure. This access protocol combines the best of simple carrier sense multiple access (CSMA) and spread spectrum techniques. It trades the bandwidth in broadband applications for higher power efficiency and throughput. Compared with other access schemes, it consumes far less power. This access protocol does not require a dedicated control channel, or synchronization, whether global or local. Additionally, it has very low delay and does not have the problem of coordinating broadcast and scheduled unicasts. For sensor network s, the inherent redundancy can be exploited to further improve power efficiency. It achieves much higher power efficiency than much more complicated algorithms seeking to reduce the redundancy.