A Multicast-based MAC Protocol for Improving Data Transmission Efficiency in Industrial WSNs.

Abstract

In industrial WSNs, attaining the desired level of data transmission efficiency is highly challenging not only for a frequently changing network topology but also for a short data acquisition cycle time. A short data acquisition time often restrains a sensor MAC protocol to incorporate an effective data packet salvaging technique. Therefore, we propose a data transmission technique in which a sending node multicasts data packets to all candidate parents including its primary parent. As a result, the necessity of data retransmission attempts is totally avoided, which greatly improves the data transmission efficiency in industrial WSNs. By simulation experiments, we have shown that the proposed multicast-based MAC protocol surpasses all the competing MAC protocols regarding the successful data packet delivery and power saving with a significant margin