Wireless Personal Communications

https://doi.org/10.1007/s11277-018-6028-3

Recent Advances in MAC Protocols for the Energy Harvesting

Based WSN: A Comprehensive Review

Pardeep Kaur1,2 · B. S. Sohi1 · Preeti Singh2

© Springer Science+Business Media, LLC, part of Springer Nature 2018

Abstract
Wireless sensor networks are catching the attention of the researchers in various fields like
structural, healthcare monitoring, but the real world adoption is getting difficult due to its
dependence on the battery power, so energy harvesting comes to its rescue. To utilize the
harvested energy in the best manner, MAC protocols which control the transreceiver in
a node are presented here. They are different from the battery powered WSN where the
focus is on increasing the lifetime of the nodes, rather these protocols focus on improv-
ing the quality of the network. With optimal tradeoff between the infinite network lifetime
and energy availability, MAC protocols need to be redesigned for energy harvesting based
wireless sensor networks (EHWSN). In this paper first EH technology in wireless sensor
networks is discussed. Then a survey of EH based MAC protocols is done in a classified
manner. The comparison of the protocols is done based on the different metrics such as
energy conservation factor, scalability, latency etc. State of the art literature survey is pre-
sented so that users have consolidated data to pick up the one based on their application
requirement. Challenges specific to applications is presented along with the various gaps
to give an insight into the future research directions. To the best of the author’s knowledge,
review of all the EHWSN MAC protocols is not reported till date.

Keywords  Energy harvesting · Medium access protocols · Sensor nodes

* Preeti Singh
preeti_singh@pu.ac.in
Pardeep Kaur
pardeep.tur@gmail.com
B. S. Sohi
bssohi@yahoo.com
1
Chandigarh University, Gharuan, Punjab, India
2
UIET, Panjab University, Chandigarh, India

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1 Introduction

Wireless sensor networks (WSN) are gaining popularity to monitor various physical or
environmental parameters for a large area. Numerous applications have been defined with
the aim to make the human life easier like in healthcare, structural monitoring etc. But the
major bottleneck for its real-world adaptation in everyday use is its dependency on the bat-
tery power. As the size of the sensor nodes is very small so batteries of large power cannot
be used. Also, mostly the deployment of the nodes is in open environment to monitor the
various activities. It is a tedious task to change the batteries over every couple of weeks [1].
Till now, the focus of most of the researchers has been to increase the lifetime of the sensor
nodes by various methods like duty cycling, efficient protocol designing to use the energy
wisely. But this all is again possible up to a certain limit only. At the end, the need is to
replace the batteries only, depending on the application and the deployment area. Recently
the focus of the researchers shifted to get energy from some alternate sources, which is
continuous for the sensor nodes, time to time. So energy harvesting from the environment
known as ambient energy catches the attention of the researchers. Energy harvesting is not
a new technology as lots of work is being done to harvest energy from solar, wind sources
etc. Windmills, solar panels, rooftops in commercial ventures are evident of this work.
This type of energy is available free of cost, eco-friendly and pollution free. But if we talk
of energy harvesting for the wireless sensor networks, new research approach need to be
defined.
In WSN, a large number of sensors are continuously sensing the data, decoding the
information and then transmitting it to the other sensors through the transreceiver as shown
in Fig.  1. Energy harvester gets the ambient energy from the environment and uses it to
provide the power to the other components of the EHWSN. As ambient energy is random
in nature, so it is stored in a supercapacitor for the future use until the time energy is not
available. Transmitting medium is shared commonly by the entire sensor in that area. This
access to the shared medium is managed by the MAC layer of the OSI model so that the
data lost due to the collisions is minimum and need of retransmission is the least [2]. In the
WSN nodes, most of the energy consumption is done by the radio subpart only, sensing
and processing of information consume a small part of the energy. Various parameters of
WSN like throughput, delay, energy consumption, fairness are dependent on the way MAC
layer is designed. So, MAC layer plays an important role in the efficient design of WSN
application [3].

Energy Super
harvester capacitor

Sensor Microcontr Trans

oller receiver

Fig. 1  EHWSN node structure

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Recent Advances in MAC Protocols for the Energy Harvesting Based…

In the simple WSN network, powered by a battery, while designing the MAC layer,
most of the focus of the researcher goes into maximizing the network lifetime of the nodes,
to keep the network alive for a larger time. To get that, many other important parameters
like quality of data, fairness, throughput, latency, load balancing, packet loss, temporal
dead nodes etc. are being ignored. So in the EHWSN, the focus is towards these important
design parameters to maximize the utility and enhance the quality of the WSN network.
The size of the sensors is very small, so the size of the EH used has to be comparable to
the size of the sensor. Also for the indoor WSN based applications, where solar energy is
not available, some alternate energy harvesting mechanism needs to be explored like Vibra-
tion energy, Piezo energy, RF energy etc. As shown in Fig. 2, energy harvesting further is
of two types: either the whole system designed to be dependent fully on the energy harvest-
ing only, known as a WSN-HEAP. Secondly, Partial Energy Harvester can be used where
Super Capacitors or Batteries are used as a backup energy source, till the time energy is
available again to harvest. If the harvesting rate is greater than or equal to the consumption
rate, it is called the ENO_MAX condition [4]. So to attain this condition, MAC protocol
design need to be adaptive according to the application and the surrounding environment.
Further considering the importance of packet loss in node communication, network
throughput can be increased [5]. Normally link quality is measured using received signal
strength indicator (RSSI). But here, during the network initialization phase, first all nodes
gather information about packet loss from all neighbours. Then cluster head is chosen
based on smallest packet loss rather than highest RSSI. Therefore, decrease in energy con-
sumption and increase in network throughput is seen.
The previous section highlights the objective of the research that needs to be done. The
rest of the paper is organized as follows: In Sect.  2, classification of MAC protocols are
presented, their performance requirements and application scenario are given. Section  3
deals with related work done till now. Then MAC protocols and their comparison for
EHWSN is done. Finally, in Sect. 5, the conclusion of the work done and open research
areas are presented.

2 Classification of MAC Protocols

Protocol basically is a set of rules that govern the behavior of the communication. It is like
an agreement among the different nodes on how to share the common medium. So, the
proper design of the protocol stack is important for the overall functioning of the WSN.
MAC protocol design depends on the type of application like in traditional wired com-
puter networks, QoS and bandwidth efficiency are the main priority for the designer. In bat-
tery powered WSN, energy efficiency and network lifetime are the main concern whereas,
in EH-WSN, energy neutrality and load balance are the main issues.

Fig. 2  Types of energy harvest-

ing Energy
harvesting

Complete
Partial Energy
Energy
Harvester
Harvester

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 P. Kaur et al.

Based on these, MAC protocols are classified into various types, as shown in Fig. 3.
Firstly depending on the type of synchronization among various nodes in a network,
they are classified as Synchronous or Asynchronous MAC protocols. Since in the case
of the energy harvesting, availability and rate depend on external uncontrolled atmos-
phere, therefore common synchronization schedule for all the nodes is not of much
use [6]. Asynchronous protocols suit them the most. They are further classified into
sender or the receiver-initiated. Receiver-initiated offers many advantages as compared
to the sender-initiated. The amount of time for which the nodes will use the channel is
very less as compared to the sender-initiated protocols since idle listening is negligible
in this. Therefore, more nodes can communicate with each other which increases the
capacity and throughput of the network. As the access is controlled by the receiver,
therefore, it is more efficient to detect the collision and to recover the lost data. Over-
hearing is also less as it is beacon based which is shorter than the preamble. While
designing MAC layer protocols some important parameters which are important are dis-
cussed in the next section.

MAC
PROTOCOLS

SYNCHRONO ASYNCHRON
US MAC OUS MAC
PROTOCOLS PROTOCOLS

CONTENTIO RESERVED SENDER RECEIVER

N BASED TIME SLOT INITIATED INITIATED

EX:SMAC PREAMBLE BEACON

EX:TMAC
,DSMAC SAMPLING BASED

EX:,BMAC,X
EX:,RIMAC
MAC

Fig. 3  Types of MAC protocols

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2.1 Performance Requirements for the MAC Layer

Throughput Efficiency of a protocol is measured by throughput which is a measure of the

rate at which information or packets are being delivered. It can be related to capacity in
case of the wireless link. For an efficient protocol, throughput should be maximum.
Scalability Scalability refers to the adaptation of a protocol to the consequences of
increased network size. Consequences of increase in network size are increased traffic,
overhead and load. One way to deal with the issue is to localize the interactions so that
nodes need less global knowledge to operate.
Latency Latency can be referred as the time delay between message transmission and
message arrival. It is an important constraint for time critical application. Latency needs to
be carefully determined and minimized in case of real-time environments.
Hop Count One of the constraints is the number of hops taken by packets to reach up
to sink. The operation of MAC protocol varies for the single-hop and multi-hop scenario.
In the case of multiple hops taken to reach up to sink, data needs to be aggregated before
sending it to sink. Hence data aggregation is a considerable factor in the design of MAC
protocols.
Load Balancing Proper traffic load distribution, in the case of multi-hop networks, is
important as uneven load may lead them to completely exhaust its energy. Depending on
the residual energy load should be properly distributed [5].
Error Correction and Detection This is another responsibility of the MAC layer in tradi-
tional computer networks, to check the correctness of the information received, but here in
WSN, MAC main focus goes to the energy usage only.
Packet Loss Packet loss means failure of one or more transmitted packets to arrive at the
destination. It minimizes the packet delivery ratio.
Temporal Dead Nodes If the energy harvested from the ambient sources cannot balance
the energy consumption, nodes run out of energy leading to the temporal death of nodes.

2.2 Applications for the WSN

Application area of the WSN is widespread. Today, in the age of internet of things,
sensing of data is going all around the world on a wide scale. These application areas
can be further categorized as for whether based on the traffic pattern or on the delay as
shown in Fig.  4. Some applications require the continuous sensing of the parameters
like in the military applications. Others may sense the data after certain fixed prede-
termined time only, like broadcasting of the weather parameters on an hourly basis or

Applications
Based on the Traffic pattern Based on the Delay
Event driven
Continuous traffic Delay sensitive Delay insensitive
traffic

Hybrid Applications (Patient monitoring )

Fig. 4  Classification of applications

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 P. Kaur et al.

quarterly, whatever user demands. Some applications are said to very delay sensitive
while others maybe not. In the healthcare sector, the merging of these classifications is
done, known as hybrid applications. Here the continuous monitoring is required, if any
unusual results, some event-driven alarms need to be generated and that too in the least
delay time.

3 Related Work

MAC design for the energy harvesting systems depends a lot on the type of harvester
used, deployment environment and nature of the application. Ramejani et al. [7] pre-
sent a review of the EHWSN MAC protocols. Various protocols are identified accord-
ing to the technique applied to them. Categorization of protocols is done on the basis
of load balancing, wake up awareness time, contention reduction etc. However, it does
not consider all the EHWSN protocols, only some popular protocols are discussed and
compared, so this work needs to be elaborated in terms of scalability and suitability for
the type of application involved.
Del et al. [7] have reviewed various protocols like ODMAC, XMAC, EAMAC. On
the basis of fairness metric comparison is done among the ODMAC versus XMAC,
then EAMAC versus EHMAC and PMAC w.r.t to the SMAC and TMAC. But suit-
ability of the particular protocol for the targeted applications is missing. The focus is
particularly on the asynchronous protocols only.
Kosunalp et al. [8] first, gave the technical aspects of various protocol in detail for
the vivid readers. They discussed several protocols like PPMAC, EHMAC, MTTP,
ODMAC, ERIMAC, and QAEEMAC in their work. Then a comparison of various
MAC protocols taking the parameters as harvesting policy, channel access, topology,
and adaptivity to changes is done. But the implementation of these on the real plat-
forms and scalability is missing.
Tan et al. [9] highlighted another important issue called temporal death among the
nodes. This occurs when the Eno_max condition is violated. This work deals with this
issue by modeling the energy harvesting process, queue dynamics, the probability of
packet dropping and gave the significant results.
Tang et  al. [10] studied the energy harvesting device (EHD) with temporal death
and modeled the transmission policy. It reported that EHD should perform the task
based on the energy availability. It suggested that in case of abundant energy, it is to be
used aggressively and if running low, to be more conservative to prevent the temporal
death phenomenon.
Based on literature survey first, a chronology for the various protocols is presented in
Table 1. All the MAC protocols discussed belong to EHWSN but some battery powered
WSN based are also included as later they become the base for the EHWSN MAC proto-
cols or have the scope to be adapted according to the energy harvesting conditions.
A comprehensive review covering all these EHWSN based MAC protocols are still
missing. It should include all the different aspects like mechanism used, whether simu-
lated only or on the basis of realistic parameters, type of network whether single hop
or scalable network, real hardware platform details give a clear view how to be adapted
for the everyday sensing application. A state of the art literature survey based on all
these parameters is presented in the next section.

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Table 1  Chronology for the Year Protocols

EHWSN MAC protocols
2011 PPMAC, MTTP, ODMAC, EAMAC
2012 QAEEMAC, EHMAC, AMAC
2013 MLMAC*, AdaMAC*
2014 ERIMAC, DEEPSLEEP, LEBMAC,
HEAPEDF, ELMAC
2015 Enhanced 802.15.4
2016 WuRMAC, EHMAC

*Battery based MAC protocols

4 MAC Protocols for Energy Harvesting Networks

4.1 Probabilistic Polling MAC (PPMAC)

In this, the performance analysis for the CSMA and polling based MAC protocols have
been presented for the EH based single hop network [11]. Both slotted and unslotted
CSMA protocols have been modified for the energy harvesting scenario. It enhances the
channel performance in term of throughput, fairness etc. by transmitting a contention prob-
ability instead of broadcasting the ID of the sensor. This will give the node a chance to
transmit. Analytical models for the slotted CSMA, ID polling, PPMAC have been pre-
sented and validated using the QUALNET simulator. But scalability is ignored in this as it
covers the single hop networks only.

4.2 Multi‑tier Probabilistic Polling (MTTP)

The existing PPMAC protocol has been modified for the multi-hop criteria, therefore, scal-
ability issue has been resolved [12]. It uses a Tier based hierarchy model to do the group-
ing of the nodes w.r.t to its corresponding distance from the sink. A three-tier scenario has
been analyzed here as shown in Fig. 5. The scalability is good but the overhead associated
while increasing the number of tiers is ignored.

Fig. 5  MTTP with 3 tier scale

[12]

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4.3 On‑Demand Medium Access Control (ODMAC)

It is an on-demand receiver initiated protocol based on the energy harvesting in which

the load is distributed w.r.t to the status of the harvested energy [13]. The overhead
of the communication is decreased and the system is tried to be secure using the bea-
con replay attack. Opportunistic forwarding lessens the energy wasted on idle listening.
Also, load distribution is done according to the energy level of the sensors.
Figure  6 shows the typical communication between transmitter and receiver. Each
receiver periodically transmits a beacon which tells that it is ready to accept the incom-
ing data. Suppose that the sensor node B needs to transmit a packet to sensor node A.
Node B listens to the channel waiting for a beacon. When node A wakes up from its
sleeping period and tries to transmit a beacon. First, node A listens to the channel for
an amount of time (TIFS). If the channel is free during that time, node A returns to a
sleeping state. If the channel is free, node A transmits the beacon and initiates a wait-
ing timer, TTX, and waits for incoming packets. If no node transmits, node A returns to
the sleeping state. Before the transmission, node B-backs off a random number of time
slots. Unless the channel remains free, node A quits this beacon and begins listening
for the next one. If the channel is free, the node initiates the transmission. After the
successful termination of the transmission, node B returns to a sleeping state; unless
it has more queued packets. All the simulation work is done in the OPNET and MAT-
LAB software. Then the protocol is implemented on the wireless platform called ez40-
rf2500. But the energy prediction is not used for the duty cycling adjustment, so it may
be a problem in the real scenario set up.

4.4 Energy Adaptive MAC (EAMAC)

Adaptation of power for the different sensors based on their distance from the master
node is reported here [14]. A scenario of ten sensor nodes is considered and contention
time and fairness are observed. Energy-adaptive contention algorithm, when applied,
increases the throughput for the nodes having lower energy harvesting rate and for the
nodes having relatively higher energy harvesting rate is decreased. But some assump-
tions have been made which limit its usage. No hidden terminal problem is considered.
Also, a node can transmit only one packet per round.

Fig. 6  Communication between ODMAC transmitter and receiver [13]

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4.5 Quality of Service Aware MAC (QAEEMAC)

The classification of the data packets is done in which the urgent data is sent first when-
ever the ENO max condition is violated [15]. Whenever the receiver wakes, the trans-
mitter starts sending its high priority data first while others go into the sleep state, but
performance is checked for one receiver only, that too for a single hop network.

4.6 Energy Harvesting MAC (EHMAC)

This is the extension of the PPMAC only by considering the multi-hop networks in a
receiver-initiated protocol [16]. A random topology with a varying number of nodes
from 50 to 100 is considered taking the constant EH and varying EH rate. The problem
of the hidden terminal is also taken into account. A node after some random time senses
a channel before transmitting a polling packet to see whether the channel is idle. To
lower the probability of polling packets collision, a random time is selected between 0
and ­tp (polling time). If the channel is not free it waits till the time channel is free.

4.7 Adaptive MAC (AMAC)

Xenofon et al. [17] gave an extension of their protocol called the ODMAC known as the
Adaptive MAC. They present the analytical model for the multi-hop based asynchro-
nous receiver initiated protocol. It supports individual duty cycles for the nodes as it is
the primary requirement of the EH nodes due to ever-changing nature of the surround-
ing energy. It balances the load according to the application requirement. It also uses the
opportunistic forwarding and binding scheme which further reduces the delays.

4.8 Multi‑layer MAC (MLMAC)

This protocol is designed taking the key parameters of low duty cycle and a low number
of collisions for the battery based WSN network [18]. Sensors have a very short listen-
ing time which also reduces the energy usage. It is a distributed contention-based MAC
protocol in which the nodes discover their neighbors based on the level of the radio
signal. It is also a self-organizing therefore doesn’t need a central station to intervene.
First, the time is divided into frames. Each frame is further divided into sleep and lis-
ten time. Further, the active period is subdivided into L nonoverlapping layers as shown
in Fig.  7. This reduces the energy consumption. Low average traffic is generated and
lifetime also increases. This has a large scope if adapted according to the energy har-
vesting scenario. But unlimited buffer size and bandwidth is assumed, which is not pos-
sible in real set up, this issue also needs to be addressed.

4.9 Wireless Ad Hoc and Sensor Networks Under Relatively High Traffic Rates

(AdAMAC)

Adnan et  al. [19] presented a new MAC protocol for high traffic wireless networks. It
is presented for battery powered WSN, but because of its possible integration into the
energy harvesting scenario, it is presented over here.

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Fig. 7  Design of MLMAC [18]

It is a contention-free TDMA based protocol but in this, the priority to nodes is assigned
according to the success delivery rate. Non-homogenous models for the sensors are pre-
sented where different data rate for every sensor is given. Based on this different energy
harvesting model rates can be used depending on the application requirement. Comparison
of AdAMAC versus ATMA is given as shown in Fig. 8 and conclude that it outperforms
ATMA in latency. Simulation here is done in MATLAB. Effect of the data rate on the sin-
gle hop as well as the multi-hop networks is done.

4.10 Harvested Energy‑Adaptive MAC (HEMAC)

Lee et al. [20] gave a new direction to the EHMAC by in cooperating them into the IoT net-
works. Here, modified F-ALOHA MAC of variable frame size is used. This frame length
adjustment is done according to the energy and number of IoT devices at any given time. It
was shown that the energy efficiency of the framed slotted ALOHA is less than that of the
proposed HEMAC.

4.11 An Energy‑Harvested Receiver‑Initiated MAC Protocol for Wireless (ERIMAC)

Nguyen et al. [21] present a new protocol called ERIMAC. It is basically a new age protocol
based on receiver initiated and energy harvesting paradigm and a combination of ODMAC

Fig. 8  Latency versus number of

senders for single hop [19]

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and RIMAC protocol. It is a duty cycling protocol with carrier sensing. According to the
harvesting energy condition wake up time is adjusted and a realistic traffic model is used in
this to evaluate the network. Packet concatenation and queuing theory are further applied
to improve the performance of this protocol. It also achieves the infinite lifetime as is clear
from the Fig. 9, since all the ratios of consumed to harvested energy are less than one. Real-
world adoption is quite high for this protocol as asynchronous protocols are most popular for
the real-time motes in research and industry, especially in energy harvesting network.

4.12 Deep Sleep (Enhanced IEEE802.11)

This protocol presents the energy harvesting based IEEE802.11 for the machine to machine
communication [22]. IEEE basic protocol has a power saving mechanism which is useful
only if a number of devices are limited. But for large network problems of overhearing,
contention, collisions come into play due to the severe contention. In this energy aware
deep sleeping and controlled access helps in reducing the number of active users, therefore,
results in low contention levels. But this is proposed basically for the single hop networks.
For the multi-hop network, always-on receivers are needed otherwise it fails miserably for
the varying energy harvesting conditions.

4.13 Load and Energy Balancing MAC Protocol (LEBMAC)

Hueying et al. [23] presented a work in which the node itself predict its own next harvest-
ing cycle based on the past records. It may also broadcast it to the whole network so that
the intended nodes will also adjust their next wake up phase according to that only. Idle
listening can be reduced by a large amount. It offers low sender and receiver duty cycle,
high throughput, good fairness and a very low end to end delay. Further, comparison of
LEBMAC with three other MAC protocols is done as shown in Fig. 10 and it was found
that LEBMAC performs best in worst energy harvesting conditions also.
QUALNET platform was used along with the fuzzy logic to give the optimum MAC. It
basically improves in four ways by using the receiver initiated duty cycle control, energy-
aware interval design, automatic load balancing, and collision resolution method.

Fig. 9  Ratio of consumed to harvested rate for all the 49 nodes [21]

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4.14 Wireless Sensor Network Powered by Ambient Energy Harvesting (HEAP‑EDF)

Seah et  al. [24] proposed a polling based MAC protocol called the HEAP–EDF l for
EHWSNs. The prediction and the update mechanism for energy harvesting rate are investi-
gated here. It is basically an extension of the probabilistic polling mechanism.
In this, along with the data, Nth sensor node transmits its energy harvesting rate and the
next wake up time also to the sink for the next wakeup prediction. Channel utilization and
fairness metric are used to evaluate the network. So overhead is little more than the basic
mechanism but the improvement in the QoS is seen. This can be enhanced further by trans-
mitting the extra overheads only till the time a continuous flow of energy to harvester is
there or it is in the ENO max condition. The moment its energy starts depleting, stop trans-
mitting the extra overhead involved. Further, only the single hop network is considered.
The scenario can be studied for multi-hop criteria.

4.15 Energy Level Based MAC (ELMAC)

This protocol is designed specifically for energy harvesting users in the cognitive radio net-
works [25]. Cognitive radio allows the users to temporary access the channels whenever the
free slot is there without interfering with the normal data transmission. It uses the CSMA/
CA for the channel access. It also enhances the chance for the low energy users to access the
channel by using the differentiated access probability and differentiated contention window.
Channel fairness is very less, as sometimes high energy users will remain in this state for suc-
cessive superframes and they may lose their chance for the data transmission several times.

4.16 Wake Up Receiver Based MAC (WuRMAC)

Oller et al. [26] give a new concept of wake up receiver based MAC instead of traditionally
famous duty cycling based MAC protocols. A very low current consuming (in µA)extra
piece of hardware is attached to the main data radio section, which will wake up the whole
circuitry only upon receiving the wake-up command by the WuR section. Node model is
proposed in OMNET++. MiXiM MAC protocols for WSN are implemented in the Data
Radio module. Wake-up radio addenda are indicated by dotted lines in Fig. 11.
A major decrease in energy consumption is seen. Further, based on whether the base
MAC is receiver initiated or the transmitter-initiated, WuR can be modified accordingly. In
this paper, they make the comparison of their work with the four most widely used MAC
protocols namely IEEE802.15.4, BMAC, XMAC, and RIMAC. Simulations are done in
the OMNET++ and for the WuR in MIXIM respectively. The WuR platform used is called
the subcarrier modulation wake up radio.

Fig. 10  Average end to end delay

[23]

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4.17 EHMAC/EAC

Wang et al. [27] extended the energy harvesting work for the visible indoor light and took
the fairness of the node as the main parameter of interest. It is improved using the energy
adaptive algorithm in which the window adjustment factor is adjusted according to the
energy harvesting of the device. Acceptance angle, distance and obstruction probability
have been taken to improve the fairness of the nodes.
A comparative summary of the various EHWSN MAC protocols is presented in Table 2.
As seen, Energy conservation factors and the mechanism used distinguishes the various
MAC protocols from each other. Some protocols used the opportunistic forwarding to con-
serve the energy, others may use contention-based protocols in which no predetermined
allocation of the channel is there. It is just listening to speak type but a number of colli-
sions increases. A number of variants of this algorithm are there to reduce the collisions,
CSMA/CA is popular among them. Polling based protocols are those in which scheduling
is done in a fixed predetermined fashion and each node is allocated a part of the source.
But this increases the latency and decreases the throughput. In opportunistic forwarding
instead of waiting for a specific receiver to wake up, sender opportunistically forwards the
data to any approved receiver based on beacon obtained first. It basically reduces the idle
listening in which it has to wait for a beacon for a specified time.
For the successful real-world adaptation of the Energy harvesting based wireless sen-
sor networks, need is to enhance the MAC protocols for a given scenario. Much of the
work reported till now is done till simulation only. Prototyping of these on the real test
bed is need of the hour. Integration of this area into other ones like in IoT or cloud-based
applications is also a good approach as seen in EMAC and HEMAC. Also, the success of
any real-time application depends on simultaneously mastering the performance of each

Fig. 11  WuR based model [26]

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Table 2  Comparison table for the EHWSN MAC protocols

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Protocol Mechanism type Hops Software Hardware Energy conservation factor/any other feature

PPMAC CSMA/CA Single Qualnet No Good throughput and fairness

MTTP CSMA/CA Multi – Yes More scalability, throughput and fairness, PPMAC based
ODMAC Receiver-initiated Single Opnet Yes Opportunistic forwarding, low scalability. Duty cycling
adjustment to be prediction based
EAMAC Modified CSMA/CA Single Opnet Analytical Contention time, fairness. High collisions
QAEE MAC Receiver-initiated Single – Analytical Quality of service
EHMAC Receiver-initiated Multi Qualnet No High throughput, fairness and fewer collisions, PPMAC
extension
AMAC Opportunistic forwarding Multi OPNET Analytical Load balancing
MLMAC Contention based Single Qualnet No Less no of collisions
AdAMAC Contention-free TDMA Single Matlab No For high-speed network
HEMAC Modified F-ALOHA Single Matlab No –
ERI-MAC Receiver-initiated Single Ns2 Real traffic model is used Wake up time, throughput, latency, fairness, RI-MAC
extension
LEB MAC Receiver-initiated Single Qualnet Cymbet solar energy harvester Predictive wake-up mechanism, low scalability, fuzzy
based
HEAP-EDF Polling Single Qualnet No Throughput
ELMAC CSMA/CA Single Matlab No Contention reduction, for use in cognitive radio networks
Deep sleep IEEE802.11 Single Ns2 No Overhearing and idle listening, machine to machine learn-
ing application
WuRMAC Non duty cycling – Omnet++, mixim Dedicated hardware Latency, energy efficient
IEEE 802.15.4 enhanced CSMA/CA Single VHDL Yes Optimization of protocol for different applications
P. Kaur et al.
Recent Advances in MAC Protocols for the Energy Harvesting Based…

subcomponent of the network. The impact of each sub-component on the performance of

every other component needs to be studied and optimized.
Energy Harvester used if alone based on the heap configuration has one or the other
shortcoming. Sun energy is not available all the time. Vibration energy requires the pres-
ence of the persons after a particular time. RF energy is present everywhere but the power
it gives is not sufficient for the majority of the time. So, for the successful implementa-
tion in real time scenario, hybrid harvester model that complement each other is need of
the hour. Protocols supporting such a structure that switch between the two, need to be
designed, that too with a minimal overhead.
Also, most of the work reported w.r.t. to the MAC protocols has no mobility associated
with them. Intelligent transportation needs the mobile sensor nodes [28, 29]. Nothing of
this sort is reported till now. Lots of research is also going to the body area sensor net-
works, to provide a smart platform for the healthcare applications. There the design metrics
change drastically and latency and reliability become the major issues. Energy harvester
based on the human body temperature, heart pulse etc. and the protocols modified accord-
ing to the specific application also need to be explored. Recently, wake up receiver instead
of duty cycling protocols has been reported to be better. Extra hardware requirement is
there but it improves the overall throughput and energy efficiency of the system. A little
work is reported on this till now. Integration of these into the new incoming protocols will
improve the overall reliability and efficiency of the network.
In defense applications, security is one of the major issues for the sensed data. Security
features increase the overhead for the already energy thriving applications but major of
the protocols reported till now are missing this concept fully. Cross-layer protocols where
the protocols are further optimized according to the requirement of the connecting lay-
ers is another area requiring the immediate attention of the researchers. Smart transporta-
tion is also finding its space in the current scenario [30]. Applications like smart parking
space, traffic congestion control require the protocols which support mobility also [31]. But
with mobility, updated location tracking increases the overhead by too much, and not much
work has been reported. For the simulation of the MAC protocols, most of the existing
simulators does not support the energy harvesting libraries. They support the battery based
models only. One simulator specifically for the solar energy harvesting has been reported
named as solarcastalia [32]. It can be used as a research tool to improve the performance of
energy harvesting based WSN.
Although this paper deals with the MAC protocols primarily, but some more impor-
tant issues need to be addressed. During the data transmission, radio block is the portal
for the device to the outside world. But for switching on or off the sensing, transmitting
or receiving block, the decision lies with the microprocessor unit. Therefore the heart of
intelligent energy management system lies at the microprocessor [33], which can use the
online or offline optimization techniques for satisfactory performance. For energy harvest-
ing constraints, data scheduling, battery size and transmit power optimization, need to be
done. Till now, in the system design, communication and networking side of engineering
focus was on energy conscious design only. But with EH this traditional approach needs to
be shifted, to maintain reliable communication in random and intermittent energy arrival.
Routing and MAC protocols need to be redesigned taking the violation of ENO_MAX
condition.

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 P. Kaur et al.

5 Conclusion

Real-time applications of the wireless sensor networks require hundreds of sensor nodes
that are randomly dispersed in harsh environments. Due to limited access to the nodes,
replacement of the batteries to power the nodes is a critical issue. Energy harvesting tech-
nology which supplies the continuous energy time to time to the nodes becomes the prom-
ising one by eliminating the batteries. The design of the MAC protocols for this type of
network is very much dependent on the type of application and important design param-
eters considered. A state of the art review of all the protocols based on EHWSN is reported
in this work. Various energy conservation factors used attributes that a MAC protocol
should support, target network and feasibility for a real setup are discussed. Comparison
table further gives an insight into whether a particular protocol fits well in a given frame
and application or not. A comparative summary and key aspects of the different MAC pro-
tocols is presented in a classified way, with the hope of providing guidelines for interested
researchers. Further, besides the MAC protocols, other issues during the EH and transmis-
sion stage have been addressed for the successful adaptation of EHWSN.

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 P. Kaur et al.

Pardeep Kaur  is working as Assistant Professor in Electronics and

Communication Engineering Department in U.I.E.T, Panjab Univer-
sity, Chandigarh. She has done her Bachelor’s and Master’s degree in
Electronics and Communication Engineering. She is pursuing her
Ph.D. in wireless sensor networks. Her areas of interest are optical
communication and wireless communication.

B. S. Sohi  has recieved his B.Sc. Engineering, Master of Engineering

and Ph.D. in Electronics in years 1971, 1981 and 1992 from Panjab
University Chandigarh. Presently he is working as Pro-Vice Chancel-
lor at Chandigarh University, Gharuan, Panjab. He is having 35 years
of experience in teaching and administration. He has 105 research
publications in various fields. His areas of research are wireless net-
working and computer networking.

Preeti Singh is working as Assistant Professor in Electronics and

Communication Engineering Departmet in U.I.E.T, Panjab University,
Chandigarh. She has done her Bachelor’s and Master’s degree in Elec-
tronics and Communication Engineering. She got her Ph.D. degree in
the year 2013. Her areas of interest are Optical Communication (wired
and wireless), Optical Biosensors and Coagnitive Neuroscience.

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