ODMAC : an on-demand MAC protocol for energy harvesting - wireless sensor networks

Energy Harvesting (EH) provides a promising solution to one of the biggest problems faced by Wireless Sensor Networks (WSN), namely the energy supply. By harvesting energy from the surrounding environment, the sensors can have an in finite lifetime without any needs for battery recharge or replacement.

Battery-powered WSNs are typically designed to maximize the energy conservation in order to postpone as much as possible the inevitable battery depletion. Instead, EH-WSNs are being designed on a different principle. The focus is on maximizing the network performance while operating at a state that is energetically sustainable.

In this paper, we present ODMAC, an on demand MAC protocol for EH-WSNs which is able to support individual duty cycles for nodes with different energy profiles. Hence, each node is able to increase its energy consumption, thus its performance, to the level that the energy consumed is at the same level to the energy harvested.

The protocol is implemented and evaluated using the OPNET simulator.