MACSS: MAC Protocols Specific for Sensor Networks

Project Summary

MACSS (MAC Protocols Specific for Sensor Networks) is investigating Media Access Control (MAC) protocol design for sensor networks. Wireless networking protocols such as 802.11 ("Wi-Fi") are not directly applicable to multi-hop sensor networks because they require all nodes to listen at all times. This project will explore sensor-net-specific MAC protocol design, improving energy efficiency by allowing radios to sleep when not in use, coordinating the MAC protocol with the physical layer and sensors. We also plan to study how sensor net applications differ from Internet-style applications. For example, they may be even more bursty than Internet applications, sending virtually nothing until something is sensed, and then having a flurry of activity. Sensor networks also typically assume node collaboration, rather than competition. One result of the work will be public release of a software supporting these features.

MACSS is a project at USC/ISI funded by the NSF Information Technology Research (ITR) Program (Award No. ANI-0220026), the Intel Corporation, and Northrup Grumman Corporation.

Any opinions, findings, and conclusions or recommendations expressed in this material are those of the author(s) and do not necessarily reflect the views of the National Science Foundation or other supporters.

People

• John Heidemann Email:[email protected]
• Deborah Estrin Email: [email protected]
• Wei Ye Email:[email protected]
• Yuan Li Email:[email protected]
• Abhishek Rajgarhia (now graduated)

Publications

• Energy and Latency Control in Low Duty Cycle MAC Protocols (PDF) (PS)
  Yuan Li, Wei Ye and John Heidemann
  Technical Report ISI-TR-595, USC Information Sciences Institute, August 2004.

• Tiered Architectures in Sensor Networks
  Mark Yarvis and Wei Ye
  Handbook of Sensor Networks: Compact Wireless and Wired Sensing Systems, Editors: Mohammad Ilyas, Imad Mahgoub (ed.), CRC Press, July 2004.

• Medium Access Control in Wireless Sensor Networks
  Wei Ye and John Heidemann
  Wireless Sensor Networks, Taieb Znati, Krishna M. Sivalingam and Cauligi Raghavendra (eds.), Kluwer Academic Publishers, May 2004.
  Also available as a Technical Report (PDF) (PS), ISI-TR-580, USC Information Sciences Institute, October 2003.

• Demonstration of Schedule and Latency Control in S-MAC (PDF) (PS)
  Yuan Li, Wei Ye and John Heidemann
  Technical Report ISI-TR-581, USC Information Sciences Institute, November 2003.

• Networking Issues in Wireless Sensor Networks (PDF) (PS)
  Deepak Ganesan, Alberto Cerpa, Yan Yu, Deborah Estrin, Wei Ye and Jerry Zhao
  Journal of Parallel and Distributed Computing (JPDC), Special issue on Frontiers in Distributed Sensor Networks, Elsevier Publishers, To appear.
  

• Medium Access Control with Coordinated Adaptive Sleeping for Wireless Sensor Networks (PDF) (PS)
  Wei Ye, John Heidemann and Deborah Estrin
  IEEE/ACM Transactions on Networking, Vol. 12, No. 3, pp. 493-506, June 2004.
  An earlier version is available as a Technical Report(PDF) (PS) ISI-TR567, USC Information Sciences Institute, January 2003.

• A Flexible and Reliable Radio Communication Stack on Motes (PDF) (PS)
  Wei Ye, John Heidemann and Deborah Estrin.
  Technical Report ISI-TR-565, USC Information Sciences Institute, September 2002.

• An Energy-Efficient MAC Protocol for Wireless Sensor Networks (PDF) (PS)
  Wei Ye, John Heidemann and Deborah Estrin
  In Proceedings of the 21st International Annual Joint Conference of the IEEE Computer and Communications Societies (INFOCOM), Vol.3, pp. 1567-1576, New York, NY, USA, June, 2002.
  An earlier version is available as a Technical Report (PDF) (PS), ISI-TR-543, USC/ISI, Sept, 2001.

Software

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