International Journal of Wireless Communication and Information Systems (IJWCIS) Vol 1 No 1 April, 2011

18

Optimized Latency Secured (LS) MAC Protocols

for Delay Sensitive Large Sensor Networks
Monir Hossen1, Ki-Doo Kim2 and Youngil Park2
1

Khulna University of Engineering and Technology, Dept. of Electronics and Communication Engineering, Khulna-9203, Bangladesh
2
Kookmin University, Department of Electronics Engineering, Seoul 136-702, Korea
[email protected]

Abstract: The performance of Wireless Sensor Networks (WSN) is

based on the latency of data transmission and energy consumption
by the networks. Especially in case of large tree based WSN,
latency as well as energy consumption is a great challenge.
Nowadays, Zigbee is used as a most popular Medium Access
Control (MAC) protocol for beacon enable WSN. The number of
time frames required in the reverse transmission of Zigbee is
directly proportional to the number of hops in the network.
Therefore, the latency problem becomes a major challenge when
deploying a WSN with large number of hops. In this paper, we
propose Latency-Secured (LS) MAC protocol that executes data
transmission in only a single time frame. Simulations have been
conducted for the protocol and the results are compared with those
of classic S-MAC, adaptive S-MAC, LE-MAC, and Zigbee. When
compared with Zigbee more than 90% latency reduction can be
achieved at the cost of 15% more energy.
Keywords: wireless sensor networks (WSN); latency secured
(LS) protocol; beacon enable network

1. Introduction
WSNs are becoming increasingly popular for the modern uCity based applications, where a large number of sensor
nodes are deployed. These large numbers of nodes are
connected to the infrastructure via a single sink node called
coordinator. The dominant data flow is from sensor nodes to
the coordinator although a small number of transmissions are
originated in the reverse direction involving control messages
like clear to send (CTS) and request to send (RTS) signals
[1]. With the increase of hop numbers in ad-hoc based WSNs
the data collision probability and transmission time are
increased. Increased time delay is highly undesirable for
delay sensitive applications such as fire alarm, security
surveillances and critical situation monitoring systems. One
of the most fundamental ways to reduce the time delay is to
avoid collisions by preventing data transmission among two
neighboring nodes at a time [2]. Different MAC protocols are
provided to make collision free data transmission from
source nodes to the coordinator. Time delay problem is still a
great challenge in WSNs even though many researchers have
developed different MAC protocols to solve this problem.
In basic S-MAC [2,3], it is observed that, reverse data from
source node suffers 4 sec time delay which is 4 hops apart
from the coordinator for low data traffic in linear type WSN.
Increasing the hop distance would proportionally increase the
time delay, which is not tolerable in delay sensitive
applications. In T-MAC [4], variable length active time is
used at each node which adaptively changes the duty cycle
and data flow. After completing transmission, nodes wait for

a time period called timeout and turn to sleep mode if they do

not sense any ongoing transmission which causes addition
latency problem. T-MAC uses a radio interference range
which is larger than the usual transmission range to activate
all nodes in the network at a time. If any node enters into
active mode then all the nodes in the radio interference range
remain active unnecessarily for a long period which creates
additional energy consumption problem. DSMAC [5] is used
to minimize latency by doubling the duty cycle based on the
quantity of queued data traffic. Since DSMAC performed
latency reduction by doubling the duty cycle it suffers more
energy consumption problem.
DGRAM [6] is a time division multiple access based energy
efficient MAC that uses slot reutilization technique to reduce
the latency. It requires a sensor network deployed with
uniform node density. In DMAC [7], the duty cycle is
adaptively adjusted depending upon the traffic load in the
network by varying the number of active slots to achieve both
latency efficiency and energy saving. In adaptive S-MAC [8]
two-hop transmission is executed in a time frame which
reduces the latency by half than the basic S-MAC, but cannot
solve the multi-hop latency problem in large sensor network.
LE-MAC [9] introduced a traffic aware early wake-up (Twakeup) scheme where the CTS signal is used to wake up a
node from sleep mode. Here the sink node transmits the
carrier sensing (CS) signal and switches the node states. The
number of hops that data can be transmitted in a single time
frame is decided by the extension of the CS range, which
decides the latency of the networks.
This paper presents a latency secured MAC (LS-MAC), as a
new protocol explicitly designed for beacon-enabled large
WSNs. Reducing the time delay in a large WSN is the
primary goal in our scheme, the proposed protocol also has
good collision avoidance capability. We have identified that
the main source of time delay is the requirement of time
frame, which is proportionally increased with the number of
hops and collisions among neighboring nodes. To solve this
problem, we propose data transmission of all hops in the
network in a single time frame. Parent nodes should wait
until receiving the response from all children nodes, and after
receiving the data from all children nodes it transmits to the
next parent node, which is very effective way to avoid data
collision. This protocol considers three different states at
each sensor node, i.e., active state, sensing state, and sleep
state. In active state sensor nodes are able to receive or
transmit data. In sensing state nodes can only sense RTS/CTS
signals, which forces nodes into active state. In sleep state
nodes cant receive or transmit data, and dont respond to
RTS/CTS signal; only a beacon signal can wake up nodes

International Journal of Wireless Communication and Information Systems (IJWCIS) Vol 1 No 1 April, 2011
from sleep state. Although the proposed protocol consumes
slightly more energy in comparison with Zigbee, it offers
outstanding performance to reduce latency in large sensor
networks, as demonstrated by the simulation results.
The remaining part of the paper is organized as follows.
Section 2 describes related WSN protocols in the literature.
Section 3 presents a detailed description of the proposed LS1 and LS-2 protocols. Simulation results and performance
comparison with other protocols are presented In Section 4.
Finally, some concluding remarks and future works are
clarified.

Listen

Listen

Sleep

Sleep

19
Listen

Source
1
Data

RTS

Data

RTS

2
CTS

ACK
RTS

Data

CTS

ACK

Sleep Delay

3
CTS

ACK

Data

RTS

4
CTS

ACK
RTS

Data
Sleep Delay

5
Sink SYNC

CTS

SYNC

Time Frame 1

ACK

SYNC

Time Frame 2

Figure 2. Operation of adaptive S-MAC

2. Related Works
There are significant number of MAC protocols that focuses
on reducing the latency as well as energy consumption of
WSNs. In this section a short review of rather closely related
protocols are presented to emphasize the significance of the
proposed protocol.
Basic S-MAC[2] is a popular WSN protocol that maintains
periodic listen and sleep in each time frame to reduce idle
listening period, avoid data overhearing, and shrink the
control packet overhearing which reduces the overall energy
consumption of WSN. No doubt S-MAC tries to reduce the
waste of energy from all the above sources, but at the cost of
high latency which is undesirable in delay sensitive networks.
It also needs SYNC (Synchronization) packet transmission
from the coordinator to multiple hops, requiring much energy
to cover a large sensor network. The basic operation of
typical S-MAC is shown in Figure 1. As shown in this
Figure, the time frame is divided into two parts: listen and
sleep periods. A SYNC packet is transmitted in the beginning
of each time frame, then source node 1 and the nearest parent
node 2 exchange RTS/CTS signals and immediately transmit
data packets while node 3 is in sleep state to save energy
from idle listening. Since node 3 is not active, node 2 have to
queue the data packet for further data transmission to its
nearest parent node 3; it should wait until the next time
frame, which requires a large time delay.
Listen

Sleep

Listen

Sleep

Listen

Sleep

Source
1
Data

RTS

RTS

Sleep Delay

2
CTS

ACK

RTS

Data

CTS

Sleep Delay

3
CTS

ACK

RTS

Data
Sleep Delay

4
Sink
SYNC

SYNC

SYNC

Time Frame 1

Time Frame 2

ACK

SYNC

LE-MAC[9] is a useful approach for reducing sleep delay in

multiple hops. Its performance depends on the ability of CS
range, which is normally not more than the twice of actual
transmitting or receiving range[10]. In this respect, LE-MAC
proposed up to 4-hop transmission in a single time frame as
shown in Figure 3. If the total hops in a network is more than
4, then it requires another time frame. The performance of
this scheme is restricted by CS range and SYNC signal
transmission distance.
Listen

Listen

Sleep

Source
1
RTS

Data

RTS

Data

2
CTS

ACK
RTS

Data

CTS

ACK

3
4

Carrier
sensing

CTS

Carrier
sensing
5
Sink SYNC Carrier
sensing

ACK
RTS

Data

CTS

ACK
RTS

Data
Sleep Delay

T-wakeup

CTS

ACK

Time Frame 1

Figure 3. Operation of LE-MAC

Zigbee[11] is a well acceptable protocol that provides an
efficient algorithm to avoid data collision and excessive
energy consumption in large sensor network. This protocol
introduced beacon rather than SYNC signal which is
transmitted from coordinator to children nodes in hop-byhop fashion. Zigbee also uses periodic listen and sleep cycle
to avoid idle listening as well as to increase the battery life,
but the latency is still undesirable for the delay sensitive large
networks. As in the basic S-MAC protocol, the number of
time frames required in reverse transmission is directly
proportional to the number of hops in the networks as shown
in the Figure 4.

Time Frame 3

Figure 1. Operation of typical S-MAC

In order to reduce this delay adaptive S-MAC[8] is
proposed. It allows two-hop transmission in a time frame by
waking up the third node using a vector timer. In Figure 2, it
is shown that both node 2 and node 3 receive data in the first
time frame but node 4 is in sleep state to save energy and
should wait until the next time frame. This protocol reduces
the number of time frames as well as overall latency of the
networks by half compared to basic S-MAC. In [4] is
proposed future request-to-send (FRTS) scheme for fast data
transmission than adaptive S-MAC which allows 3 hops
transmission in a time frame. Main limitation of FRTS is that
it does not guarantee the collision free packet transmission.

: Beacon
: CAP
Source
Time Frame 1
Node
Sleep Delay
1

Time Frame 2
Sleep Delay

Time Frame 3
Time Frame 1
Sleep Delay

2
3
4

Coordinator

Data Transfer
From 1 to 2

Data Transfer
From 2 to 3

Data Transfer
From 3 to 4

Figure 4. Operation of Zigbee.

3. Details of the Proposed Protocols

Data Transfer
From 1 to 2

International Journal of Wireless Communication and Information Systems (IJWCIS) Vol 1 No 1 April, 2011
The main goal of the proposed MAC protocol is to modify
the existing beacon-enabled Zigbee to reduce the latency of
large sensor networks, while maintaining the energy
efficiency and collision avoidance, and minimizing the idle
listening. To achieve the design goal, we have developed the
latency secured MAC protocols. A beacon is used to initiate
the time frame which is composed of listen time and sleep
time. Listen time is composed of transmitting time, receiving
time and sensing time. A sensor network is composed of
many small nodes in an ad hoc fashion to gather specific data
from the surrounding area through inter-node message
exchange[12]. The basic scheme of the LS protocol is shown
in Figure 5, where only one coordinator node, one
intermediate node and two source nodes are considered for
simplicity. The coordinator node transmits a beacon signal
and forward data to the intermediate node, which passes the
received beacon and data to two source nodes. After
completing the the forward transmission two source nodes
initiate reverse transmission by sending RTS signal to the
intermediate node.
Let us assume that source node 1 transmits the RTS signal
first to the intermediate node, which then responses by
asserting CTS. After receiving CTS signal the source node 1
starts to transmit reverse data and the source node 2 should
wait. After finishing the data transmission, source node 1
immediately enters into sleep mode and the source node 2
starts transmission. The intermediate node doesnt start its
reverse transmission until receiving data from all its children
nodes. This is the basic procedure of the reverse transmission
in the LS protocol, which leads to minimization of data
collision. Two types of LS protocol is defined in this paper,
LS-1 and LS-2, according to the number of time frames
required for the transmission in both directions.
Source
node 1
Intermediate
node

Coordinator

Beacon+
F. data

Beacon+
F. data
Beacon+
F. data

Source
node 2

20

In the LS-1 scheme only a single time frame is used to

transmit both forward and reverse data of any hops in the
network. The coordinator node first attempts to transmit a
beacon signal as well as forward data as shown in Figure 6.
The beacon signal acts as an initiator of time frame with
some delay from the coordinator to source nodes. Upon
receiving the beacon each node wakes up from sleep state
and receives forward data from the nearest parent node.
Source
Node
N5

Beacon
+ F data
Data
RTS

CTS

Sleep period

RTS

Data

N4
CTS

RTS

Data
N3
CTS

RTS

Data
N2
CTS

Sleep delay

N1

Coordinator

Time Frame 1

Figure 6. Operation of LS-1 protocol

After transmitting forward data each node enters into a
sensing state to save energy and waits for the RTS signal to
receive reverse data from its children nodes. Every parent
node responds to RTS of their children nodes by CTS and
then receives the reverse data. After transmitting reverse data
each node remains in sleep state until the arrival of next
beacon signal. The optional ACK (Acknowledgement) signal
is not used in this protocol; instead the RTS signal from the
receiver is used to notify the successful reception. Suppose
that in Figure 6, the data packet from source node N5 is sent
to the coordinator node N1, through N4, N3 and N2.
Initially, N5 and N4 exchange RTS/CTS packets and then N4
receives data from its child N5. It is followed by the RTS
signal from N4 to its parent N3, which is regarded as an
ACK signal at N5. Figure 7 shows the sequence of reverse
data transmission in LS-1 protocol.

Figure A: Beacon and forward

data transmission

Sleep mode and

waits for beacon

Source
node 1
RTS
Intermediate
node

Coordinator

Beacon
+ Forward
data?

CTS

Yes

Source
node 2

Sensing mode

Figure B: Reverse data transmission from

source node 1 to intermediate node
Source
node 1
Intermediate
node

Coordinator

No

No

RTS from
child node
?
Yes

RTS
CTS

Source
node 2

Figure C: Reverse data transmission from

source node 2 to intermediate node

Active mode

CTS
Source
node 1

Coordinator
RTS

More child
node ?

Intermediate
node

CTS

Yes

No
Source
node 2

Figure D: Reverse data transmission from

intermediate node to coordinator

Reverse data
transmission to
parent node

Figure 5. Protocol operations

Figure 7. Flow chart of LS-1 algorithm.

3.1 LS-1 (Latency Secured Data Transmission in a Single

Frame) protocol

3.2. LS-2 (Latency Secured Data Transmission in Two

Separate Frames) protocol

International Journal of Wireless Communication and Information Systems (IJWCIS) Vol 1 No 1 April, 2011

In the LS-2 scheme the time frame is divided into two types
called forward time frame and reverse time frame. Forward
time frame is used for beacon and forward data transmission
from the coordinator to all nodes in the network. Reverse
time frame is initiated by another beacon signal from the
coordinator node and used for reverse data transmission of
all hops in the networks. In the forward case the coordinator
transmits beacon and forward data, through multiple
intermediate nodes successively to the end of the network as
shown in Figure 8. In the reverse time frame the coordinator
sends only the beacon signal all the way down to the end
nodes to initiate the frame. Upon receiving the beacon signal
each node wakes up from the sleep state and then stay in the
sensing mode to receive the reverse data from their children
nodes. Finally, reverse data transmission starts as in the LS-1
algorithm. Figure 9 shows the sequence of the data
transmission in LS-2 protocol.
Source
Node

through multi-hop network experiences different delays at

each hop from beacon, backoff, propagation, and queuing. In
the LS protocol queuing delay is a dominant factor in latency,
which occurs from sleep period. It is clear from Figure 10
that data occurring in sleep period must be buffered and waits
for the next beacon signal; this delay is called a queuing time,
tq. As done in[8,9] we also assume that the queuing time
happens only at the source node. For delay calculation this
queuing time is added to the actual data transmission time
which depends on packet size, data rate, number of hops,
physical distance between two data transmitting nodes, and
protocol delay. Sleep time is the period between the
completion of transmission and the beginning of the
following time frame.
Listen

N5

RTS
CTS

Sleep

Source

Listen

Listen

Sleep

Sleep

1
Data

RTS

tq

tsl

2
CTS

Beacon
+ F data Beacon

ACK

RTS

Data

tsl

Data

21

CTS

ACK

RTS

Data

Sleep period

RTS

Data
N4
CTS

Sink

RTS

Data

SYNC

SYNC

SYNC

Time Frame 1

N3

Time Frame 2

ACK

Time Frame 3

RTS

CTS

Data
N2
CTS

N1
Coordinator Forward
Time
Frame

Sleep delay

Figure 10. Sleep time and queuing time of WSNs

Reverse Time Frame

Therefore, the total delay in N-hop Zigbee is:

Time Frame 1

Figure 8. Operation of LS-2 protocol

Sleep mode and
waits for beacon

Beacon
+ Forward
data?

No

Yes
Sleep mode and
waits for beacon

Beacon for
reverse frame

(1)

where, TZB = tbackoff + ttx+ tb+ tsl , tbackoff the average delay due
to contention, ttx the transmission time of data packet across
one hop which includes RTS and CTS time, tb the beacon
time. The total delay in N-hop basic S-MAC is:

D( N ) tq ( N )TSM tsl

(2)

No

where, TSM = tbackoff + ttx+ tsl. This S-MAC latency is similar

to that of Zigbee except the beacon time tb. The total delay in
N-hop adaptive S-MAC is:

Yes
Sensing mode

No

D( N ) tq ( N )TZB tsl

D( N ) tq ( N / 2)TAS tsl

RTS from
child node
?

(3)

Yes
Active mode

CTS

Yes
More child
node ?
No
Reverse data
transmission to
parent node

Figure 9. Flow chart of LS-2 algorithm

3.3 Analysis of latency

This section analyzes the maximum latency of the proposed
schemes and compares it with those of Zigbee, basic S-MAC,
adaptive S-MAC and LE-MAC. A data packet moving

where, TAS = 2(tbackoff + ttx) + tsl because a packet can traverse

up to 2 hops in one time frame. Sleep period, tsl, is the
remaining time after 2-hop transmission in one time frame.
The total delay for N-hop LE-MAC is:

D( N ) tq ( N / K )TLE tsl

(4)

where, TLE = K(tbackoff +ttx) + tsl because a packet can traverse

up to K hops in one time frame depending upon the CS
range. Here, the sleep period, tsl, is the remaining time after
K-hop transmission in one time frame. In equation (1)-(4)
one tsl is deducted because sleep time in the last time frame is
not counted in latency as shown in Figure 8.
In LS-1 and LS-2 protocols a packet can transmit up to N
hops continuously in one time frame. Therefore, the total
delay of N-hop with LS-1 scheme is:

International Journal of Wireless Communication and Information Systems (IJWCIS) Vol 1 No 1 April, 2011

D( N ) tq ( N )TLS1

22

(5)

where, TLS1 = tbackoff + tFd + tRd. Here, tFd includes the time for
beacon and forward data transmission, and tRd the time for
reverse data transmission per hop. The total delay of N-hop
LS-2 scheme is:

D( N ) tq ( N )tFd ( N )TLS 2

(6)

where, TLS2 = tbackoff + tb + tRd . Where, tb is the beacon time in

reverse time frame.
Comparing equation (1)-(6), it is observed that the required
time frames are N for N-hop Zigbee and basic S-MAC, N/2
for adaptive S-MAC, N/K for LE-MAC while only one time
frame is needed for LS-1 and LS-2 protocols.
3.4. Analysis of energy consumption
Energy efficiency is a critical research issue to enhance the
lifetime of a small battery-powered sensor node. Signal
transmission and reception consume much more energy than
signal computation [7]. Many energy efficient MAC
protocols have been proposed to keep energy consumption
within a considerable limit. Although the main objective of
this study is to provide latency secured MAC protocol for
delay sensitive large networks, the cost of additional energy
for it should also be minimized. Energy consumption is
dependent on the type of sensor mode. In active mode nodes
are able to receive and transmit data while in sensing mode
nodes can only receive data and respond to RTS. Therefore,
the energy consumption in active mode is far more than in
sensing mode. Energy consumption in sleep mode is
neglected in this study since it is very small compared with
that of active mode or sensing mode. Hence, the total energy
consumption, ET, for N-hop LS is expressed as:
N 1

ET Pact ( N 1)(t Fa t Ra ) Psen m (t Fa t Ra )

(7)

m1

where, tFa is the active time for forward data transmission, tRa
the active time for reverse data transmission, Pact the active
mode power, and Psen the sensing mode power. From Figure
6 it is observed that after the transmission of beacon and
forward data the coordinator and every parent node enter into
sensing mode and remain until receiving the reverse data.
This sensing time is directly proportional to the number of
hops and data packet in the networks.
The total energy consumption for N-hop LS-2 MAC can be
described as:
N 1

ET Pact ( N 1)( t Fa tb t Ra ) Psen m (tb t Ra )

(8)

m 1

In Figure 8 it is found that the forward time frame does not

contain the sensing period because every node immediately
enters into sleep mode after the forward transmission. Every
sensor node experiences the sensing time after the beacon in
the reverse time frame as in LS-1 scheme.

4. Performance Evaluation by Simulation

The main goal of the simulation described here is to evaluate

the latency and energy consumption of network for Zigbee,
adaptive S-MAC, LE-MAC and the proposed algorithms.
The baseline of the simulations is that all sensor nodes
randomly generate data packet and send it at 1Mbps rate and
shut down the radio afterward.
Figure 11 is the network topology used in the simulation,
where two dimensional numbering is used to represent each
node; the first digit belongs to the number of hops and the
second digit to the number of nodes in a particular hop. This
is a 10 hop nonsymmetrical network with 32 source nodes
and one coordinator node with fixed distance of 40 meter
between two adjacent nodes. Time frame is set to 1 sec and
duty cycle, the ratio of active period over the time frame, is
assumed to be 10%. Queuing time, tq, can be the same as the
random data generation time, 0 to 1 second, since
transmission occurs once in a time frame. Packet size of 100
byte is considered for each node. Simulations are done for 10
seconds and the results are used to calculate the average. In
[13], it is explained that transmission requires 12mA while
reception requires 1.8 mA. Considering that energy is
proportional to the square term of the current sensing mode
consumes only 2.25% energy of active mode. In our
simulations 10% energy consumption including margin is
considered for the energy calculation of sensing mode.
Coordinator

(1,1)

(2,1)

(2,2)

(1,2)

(2,3)

(2,4)

(3,1)

(3,2)

(3,3)

(3,4)

(4,1)

(4,2)

(4,3)

(4,4)

(5,1)

(5,2)

(5,3)

(5,4)

(6,1)

(6,2)

(6,3)

(6,4)

(7,1)

(7,2)

(7,3)

(7,4)

(8,1)

(8,2)

(8,3)

(9,1)

(9,2)

(10,1)

Figure 11. Network model of the simulation

Figure 12 shows the average latency for different hop
distance of the network model shown in Figure 11. The
additional time consumed in Zigbee is linearly proportional
to the number of hops in the network, while both LS-1 and
LS-2 require only one time frame for all hop distances in the
network. In both LE-MAC and adaptive S-MAC, increment
of latency is not linear; instead, the latency sees a jump every
four hops in LE-MAC and every two hops in adaptive SMAC.

International Journal of Wireless Communication and Information Systems (IJWCIS) Vol 1 No 1 April, 2011

Figure 14. Comparison of average and maximum latency

10
LS-1
LS-2
LE-MAC
adaptive S-MAC
Zigbee

9
8

Delay [Sec]

The overall latency in the network depends on packet size,

distance between nodes, speed of data transmission and
queuing delay. Figure 15 shows that the delay increase is
negligible with the increase of load in the network since data
propagation time in WSN is very small compared to the
protocol delay.

6
5
4
3

0.630

LS-1
LS-2

0.625

0.620

0
2

5
6
Hop distance

10

Figure 12. Average latency of each protocol

Figure 13 compares only the average latency of LS-1 and
LS-2; LS-1 shows better performance since it doesnt require
additional beacon that is used for the reverse traffic in LS-2.

Latency [Sec]

0.615
0.610
0.605
0.600
0.595

0.70
0.68

0.590

LS-1
LS-2

0.66

0.64

3
4
5
6
7
8
Total data in the network [KB]

10

Figure 15. Latency in LS-1 and LS-2 for variable load

0.62
0.60
0.58
0.56
0.54
0.52
1

4
5
6
Hop distance

10

Figure 13. Comparison of average latency of LS-1 and

LS-2
Figure 14 shows the comparison of average and maximum
latency LS-1 and LS-2. It is sometimes more important to
know the maximum value than the average to satisfy the
requirement. Maximum latency occurred when queuing time
of 1 sec is used while the average latency is obtained using
the random queuing time between 0 and 1 second. It is shown
that the maximum latency in LS-1 and LS-2 is about double
the average value, but still small enough compared to that of
Zigbee.

Figure 16 shows the comparison of energy consumption for

100 byte data packet generated by each node. It is found that
LS-1 and LS-2 consume about 10% and 15% more energy,
respectively, compared to Zigbee in 10-hop nonsymmetrical
network. Although the sleep period of LS-1 or LS-2 in a time
frame is much smaller than that of Zigbee, energy
consumption of them is not that much compared to Zigbee
since sensing mode consumes only 10% energy of the active
mode.
4.5
Zigbee
LS-1
LS-2

4.0
3.5

Energy consumption [mj]

Delay [Sec]

23

3.0
2.5
2.0
1.5
1.0
0.5

1.2

0.0
1

1.1

5
6
Hop distance

10

Delay [Sec]

1.0
Average delay of LS-1
Average delay of LS-2
Maximum delay of LS-1
Maximum delay of LS-2

0.9

Figure 16. Energy consumption for 100 byte data packet in

each node

0.8
0.7
0.6
0.5
1

5
6
Hop distance

10

Figure 17 compares the energy consumption for different

packet lengths in LS-1, LS-2 and Zigbee protocols. The
energy consumption of the sensor network is increased with
the packet size which is illustrated in Figure 17. The main
reason of this phenomenon is the active time of the sensor
nodes which increases with packet size. Although larger
packet size causes more energy consumption in the network

International Journal of Wireless Communication and Information Systems (IJWCIS) Vol 1 No 1 April, 2011
it is found to reduce the difference of energy consumption
among Zigbee and the proposed protocols.
6

Zigbee for 100 byte data packet

Zigbee for 200 byte data packet
LS-1 for 100 byte data packet
LS-1 for 200 byte data packet
LS-2 for 100 byte data packet
LS-2 for 200 byte data packet

Energy consumption [mj]

5
4
3

24

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Wei Ye, John Heidemann, and Deborah Estrin.

Medium access control with coordinator adaptive
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2
1
0
1

5
6
Hop distance

10

Figure 17. Energy consumption for different packet lengths

5. Conclusions
This paper presents a new MAC protocol for delay
sensitive tree-based wireless sensor networks. The proposed
LS protocols show good latency saving when compared with
other existing schemes. A main factor that increases latency
in other protocols is the required time frames with the hop
distance. No matter how many hops the WSN has, data
transmission can be completed within a time frame with the
proposed protocols. And the energy consumption increments
of the proposed scheme compared to existing protocols is not
considerable by introducing a sensing period. LS-1 protocol
shows better performance than LS-2 in terms of latency and
energy. However, LS-2 protocol provides separation of
forward and reverse transmission, which can allow additional
sleep time between them if data traffic is low.

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