Traffic Adaptive Backoff Window Control for IEEE 802.15.4 MAC in Cluster-Based WSNs with Various Traffic Fluctuations

Abstract

Traffic adaptive 2-level active period control has been proposed to enhance system performance in cluster-based wireless sensor networks (WSNs) employing IEEE 802.15.4 medium access control (MAC) under temporal and spatial (geographical) non-uniform traffic environments. This paper proposes an adaptive method of controlling the backoff window for traffic adaptive 2-level active period control. The proposed method adjusts the size of the backoff window according to the length of the current active period, which is determined by 2-level active period control, and the time position for channel access in the active period. The results evaluated through computer simulations reveal that the proposed method can improve throughput as well as achieve high energy efficiency in cluster-based WSNs with non-uniform traffic distributions.