Performance Evaluation of Asynchronous Multi-channel MAC Protocol for WSN

Wireless sensor networks enable a variety of application scenarios due to their flexibility, the wide range of hardware solutions, as well as their simplicity. However, new challenges arise that make applications viable, such as power consumption, robust communication, limited storage and processing. One of the main elements among communication and power consumption optimization aspects is related to the protocol stack and especially the medium access layer, due to the nature of the wireless environment. Thus, this article proposes a multi-channel mechanism for asynchronous receiver-initiated MAC for low-power WSN. The proposed protocol reduces energy consumption due to message contention and idle listening through an initial recognition mechanism and an efficient multichannel mechanism based on knowledge of the best channel in each node of the network. For validation of the protocol, evaluations were made for consumption, latency and rate of delivery of the network in a web application, comparing the multichannel asynchronous protocol to the synchronous protocol. The results show that the synchronous protocol presents slight superiority in communication performance, whereas the asynchronous protocol presents lower consumption.