Chapter 2

Literature Review

2.1 WSN Protocol Layers

For the communication of sensor nodes there were five layers of protocol through which
data passes by at both the sending and receiving end. Protocol layers were shown in Figure 7

Figure 1: Protocol stack for WSN

Application layer generates sensor application. Reliability of data is in the hands of Transport
layer. Packet switching and routing is done by the network layer. Data multiplexing, flow control

is done at Data link layer and physical layer is responsible for data communication over physical
medium which include modulation, generation and reception of signal.
(i) Application Layer:
Application layer includes application layers protocols for sensor network which is the
applied on sensors. These application layer protocols include queries handling, node detection,
synchronization between nodes and security related to network. For example SMP (Sensor
Management Protocol). As it can be guessed by name that SMP is used to manage sensors at
application layer level which include operation like to update node current location and exchange
it with other nodes to let the other nodes know where the corresponding nodes were at the
currently. Synchronizations also done by SMP which synchronized each node with other nodes
relative data such as their locations, requests, querying status and various other parameters.
(ii) Transport Layer:
Transport layer functionality is to provide reliable end to end communication. As its been
known that WSNs were designed for some specific application therefore the layers were also
work in the same way it means that they have to design layers according to the application
specific for to obtain maximum optimization and results from sensor nodes. Two type of
communication involved in sensor networks which usually known as upstream and downstream.
Upstream is used when the data is send from node to sink and downstream is used when data is
to be sent from sink to nodes which were usually queries. The duty of transport layer in WSNs is
to maintain the flow of this transmission, which means that transmission between sensor and
nodes should occur frequently without any interruption or error.
(iii)

Network Layer:

Network layer in WSNs is used to route the data packet when it was sent from node to sink or
from sink to node. Network layer handles how the data should move through internetworks
means how data should move from node to node until it reaches to its destination. The purpose of
network layer is to route the sensed data according to routing algorithms which involved shortest
path and many other which let the data to be switched from node to node to make it move fast
.As we know that sensor nodes utilize energy more while sending the data rather than receiving it
.to make the nodes use efficiently in terms of energy it is necessary that sensed data should be
send from the shortest distance possible from source node to the destination node or sink.
(iv) Data Link Layer:
Data link layer is used for multiplexing of data packets; it creates data frames and destroys
when the queue is full. Data link layer is used to detect the frame on medium which then make
data link layer to control all the other sensing nodes for sending the packets on medium as it was
already been taken for resource sharing by some other node on network. Data link layer uses
Mac protocol which is used to ensure that every nodes on the network access shared medium and
this can be done with different techniques based on time, frequency, scheduling. MAC (Medium
Access Control) plays a very important role in the utilization of nodes, because every event
handling is done by MAC layer which give other nodes medium access. InWSNs primary goal is
to make a sensor node working for prolong hours which can be done if the energy of the node is
utilized in an efficient manner means there should be no ideal waiting for the node which let the
node keep wake up for long time until it gets packets. For nodes to stay idle for long time also
decreases battery life which will results to poor network performance because in sensor network
all communications were depend of batteries as there were no chance of replenish battery life

when they were deployed. So transport layer played a very important role in terms of sensor
nodes overall performance and efficiency
(v) Physical Layer:
Physical layer deals with the conversion of bits to signals which were then send or received
by sensor nodes. Physical layers deals with different parameters in WSNs it deals with frequency
selection, modulation, selection of a carrier for transmission and for the decryption and
encryption of data.

2.2 Medium Access Control Protocols in WSNs.

2.2.1 Contention Based
Contention based protocol are for those medium which were shared by all the nodes in a
network. Following are some contention based protocols used by WSNs.
(i)

S-MAC:

Sensor-MAC (S-MAC) protocol is an energy efficient protocol designed for sensor nodes.
Basic concept behind S-MAC is to reduce energy consumption during implementation of sensor
nodes, so that these sensor nodes were about to perform for prolong periods of time. As energy
consumption of nodes was compromised it results in some negative effect on performance in
terms of latency. S-MAC implement on sensor nodes which organized in a way that each sensor
nodes connects with each other rather than to connect with a base station. There were some
mechanism related to effective control such as listen and sleep periodically, avoidance of
collision, coordinated synchronization and message passing.
For the reduction of idle listening of sensor node using S-MAC protocol there were a concept
of periodic listen and sleep. Its a low duty cycle mechanism which helps the node to wakeup or
sleep periodically. Node used to wakeup periodically and check the medium if there is anything
for to send or receive if not node get back to sleep mode. When the node went into sleep mode
there is a timer which start count down when the node is in sleep mode in order to make node
back to wakeup state so that again node can check the channel. All this mechanism happens
periodically. After node wakeup if there is something on the channel to send or received the node
remain in wakeup state until it receives or send the data. As shown in figure 8. The ratio of listen

duration to the whole duration frame is known as duty cycle. This duty cycle is further divided
into time slots which were reserved for RTS/CTS SYNCH packets. The duration of duty cycle
usually fixed by default but it can be changed according to application specific. These sensor
nodes do perform coordinated synchronization by exchanging their schedules with the help of
broadcast a SYNCH packet which makes which make their sleep and awake get synchronized.

Figure 2: Duty cycle of S-MAC

The node receives both SYNCH packets and data packets as the periodic listening is
divided into two parts. The first part indicates the sensing of SYNCH packets and the second one
is for RTS as shown in the figure 8. These periodic sensing were further divided into time slots
which are used for carrier sensing from sender side. If sender want to send a packet it will first
check the medium, if at the same time receiver check the medium for transmission if sender did
not detect any activity on channel in a given timeslot it means that a channel is free and its ok
with the sender node to send the data.
For to avoid collision virtual and physical carrier sensing is been done by S-MAC
protocol. Virtual carrier sensing includes the mechanism of NAV (Network Allocation Value)

which means that when the data packet is sent it include a number which shows the time slot
duration for particular transmission. If the value stored in NAV is non zero it means that medium
is still busy . Every time the channel time is out it decrements NAV value until it becomes zero.
A zero value means that the channel is free and hence its ok to send a message through channel
using S-MAC protocol.
(ii)

DS-MAC:
DS-Mac is basically an extension of S-MAC protocol the difference is that DS-MAC

dynamically changes its sleep-wake cycle time according to the estimation of current traffic
generation. DS-MAC made each node to dynamically keep record of each nodes battery level,
energy consumption and average latency. DS-MAC increase the no of duty cycles which make
them idly sleep less so that each node can receive more packets in a given slot of time duration.

(iii)

MS-MAC:

MS-MAC is also an extension of S-MAC protocol the difference is that its applicable where
the sensor nodes were mobile. Because before MS-MAC was proposed implementing a S-MAC
protocol to mobile network causes poor performance. The main advantage of MS-MAC protocol
is that if its applicable on stationary node scenario it will act like S-MAC.MS-MAC use mobility
handling mechanism which triggers the event if the node is in mobile state by sending the signal
which were of changed parameters.
(iv)

D-MAC:

D-MAC is also an energy efficient protocol which is used for data gathering in WSNs. As its
been known that if destination of data is the base station so it will move from sensor to sensor
and before the implementation of D-MAC it usually work on the principle of S-MAC which
makes the delivery of data in efficient because S-MAC include duty life cycle which let the
nodes sleep in between. To reduce this factor D-MAC was proposed which let the nodes to stay
in wakeup state so that flow of data should be remaining without any problem. D-MAC first
identifies the path from where usually data send to base station. After the path was identified it
D-MAC wakeup nodes sequentially as the occur in data flow path from nodes to sensor. D-MAC
simply identifies the path and nodes in the relevant path to the base station it will sequentially
wake up the nodes as the packet or data move forward to upper nodes until it reaches to base
station which dont let any node to get into sleep mode so with the help of D-MAC data do not
need to wait for node to wake up and as nodes were waking up sequentially it will go back to
sleep mode in a same way which let the sensor nodes to save energy and work for prolong period
of time

B-MAC:
B-MAC protocol is based on low power listening and its an energy efficient protocol. BMAC first checks the medium by sensing it known as CCA (Clear Channel Assessment). It
uses pre-amble to make the nodes to wake up and let them in a wakeup state then it will send
an actual packet. After the transmission is over node gets back to sleep. In order to start a
transmission first B-MAC sends a message to all the sensor nodes to wake up all the nodes
by telling them to get ready as if there is some data coming through the channel. Duty cycle
over here was ideal. Figure 9 shows the transmission using B-MAC protocol.

Figure 3:

Transmission using B-MAC protocol

2.2.2 Contention Free

Contention free based protocol are for those mediums which is shared by several nodes in the
network is further divided into sub channels .There were many contention free protocols
proposed for WSNs but only few of them discussed below.
(i) TRAMA:
TRAMA stands for traffic adaptive medium access. It also works for energy efficiency in
terms of throughput. Working mechanism of TRAMA is such that node switch to an idle state
when there is no transmission of data. TRAMA uses random access period method in which
every node start scheduling the wakeup and sleep time randomly for transmission period. In
dynamic scenario randomness of period will occur more frequently than that of the static ones.
(ii) SMACS:
SMACS stands for self organizing medium access control. Mechanism of SMACS enables
each node to develop a connection to their nearby nodes without any help of master or base node.
These node discover their neighbors nodes and then establish transfer schedules. Each node can
tune into any frequencies of any bands in order to communicate with their neighbor nodes.
(iii)

DE-MAC:

DE MAC stands for distributed Energy Medium Access Control. As it can be guessed by
name that this protocol is to resolve the energy related issues in WSNs. DE mechanism operate
like if any node or nodes in the network have energy below the threshold level an election is
generated among the nodes to elect the worst off nodes in terms of energy. After the worst energy
nodes were elected the other nodes allow them to sleep for a long period of time. Election criteria

is based on energy level and the other nodes elect the default node as all the nodes send their
energy level related data to their respective nodes which let all the nodes decide which one is to
be eliminated for sleep purpose.