04 - Medium Access Control (MAC)

04 – Medium Access Control
(
(MAC))
ENRECM158
Wireless Sensor Networks
D Alex
Dr Al Mason
M
ENRECM158 – Medium Access Control (MAC) Dr Alex Mason Slide 1 of 61

Correction from last week (1)
Esaved =
[(t 2 − t1) Pactive ] − Energy used with no sleep
[tdown ( Pactive + Psleep ) / 2 − ] Energy consumed getting to

sleep state
[(t 2 − t1 − tdown) Psleep ] Energy consumed while

asleep
Esaved Eoverhead
Pactive
Psleep tdown tup
t1 t2 Time
Correction from last week (2)
- Apologies for this confusion, there are number of
ways to calculate the energy saved (its geometry,
area of shapes, etc).
- You need to be able to solve these problems…
p
-One of the main ideas to take away is that if Esaved <
Eoverheads, sleep is not worthwhile!
- Slides on Blackboard have been updated!

Lecture structure
- Fundamentals of MAC protocols (wireless!).
- Low duty cycle protocols.
- Contention based protocols.
- Schedule based protocols.
- IEEE 802.15.4 MAC protocol.
- How about 802.11
802 11 and Bluetooth?
- Coursework information and summary.

Recap (1)
- Familiar now with the major hardware
components of a sensor node (controller, memory,
transceiver, sensors, battery).
- Aware of transceiver characteristics and
operational states.
- Have an idea about the different classes of sensors
that we can attach.

Recap (2)
- Different types of power source can be used, although
batteries are the typical case.
- Know that dynamic power management is one key to
saving energy for sensor nodes; the hardware is low
power, but we need software to manage this effectively.
- Learnt that there are overheads involved in power
management which need consideration.

Recap (3)
- Had an overview of the ideas behind WSN operating
systems, particularly TinyOS.
- Seen the layered structure used, how this relates to
tasks and events and how concurrency is achieved.
- Know that there are sacrifices to be made.
- Learnt a little about the different types of sensor node
available on the market at the moment.

Lecture structure
- Low duty cycle protocols.
- How about 802.11

The purpose of MAC
- MAC protocols co-ordinate the times where a
number of nodes access a shared medium.
- Critically important for wireless transmission as
many nodes may be sharing the airwaves!!
- Many different MAC protocols available for
wireless networks in general…
general

Where is MAC in the OSI model?
MAC protocol is in
the data link layer
of the OSI model

Key MAC requirements
- Delay
- Throughput
- Fairness Traditional concerns
- Stability
- Low overhead
- Energy conservation WSN
WSNs

MAC overheads
- A number of sources of overhead are involved in
MAC:
- Per-packet overhead
- Collisions
- Control packets
- Some packets may even need to be prioritised.
prioritised

Influences on MAC performance
- Heavy dependence on physical layer (i.e. air).
- Time variable error rates
- Multipath fading
- Path loss
- Attenuation
- Interference

Question??
- If nodes check the channel for activity before
transmitting, what happens in this case if A and C
transmit simultaneously to B? Why?
A B C

Hidden terminal problem (1)
- Path loss and other attenuation factors may put
two nodes out of range.
- Therefore they are hidden from each other!
A B C

Hidden terminal problem (2)
- If A begins to transmit, and a short time later C
does too, we have a collision!
- We cannot use CSMA because C is hidden from A!
A B C

Question??
- In this case, what would happen if nodes check the
channel for activity and want to communicate from
B to A and from C to D?
A B C D

Exposed terminal problem
- Now consider B transmitting to A and then C to D.
- Using CSMA C would wait until B completed…
therefore we waste bandwidth!
A B C D

Collision detection
- On a wired network, transmitter can detect collision at
receiver; results in aborted transmission.
- Low wired attenuation makes this possible; SNR at
transmitter and receiver is similar.
- We cannot make this assumption with wireless
transmission.
- Also, WSN nodes typically have simple half duplex
transceivers.
No dedicated frequency band…
- MAC has to contend with sharing frequency band with
other systems.
- Commonly this is the 2.4GHz ISM band, used by
802.11 and Bluetooth.

Traffic patterns
- MAC protocols generally are designed based on
“expected” traffic patterns.
- Constant sensing will have a consistent low bandwidth
usage.
- Event sensing will have large spikes of traffic.
- The MAC protocol needs to be highly efficient in one or
both situations (application dependant).

Summarising MAC challenges
- Hidden and exposed terminal problems
- Collision detection difficult
- Lack of dedicated frequency band
- Traffic patterns

Classes of MAC protocols
- Since there are such a large number of MAC protocols
available, we cannot speak of them all… however can
loot at the general classes:
- Fixed assignment protocols
- Demand assignment protocols
- Random access protocols

Fixed assignment
- Available resources are divided between nodes in long
term fashion.
- Duration could be minutes, hours or more…
- Changes require control packets to reorganise
allocation.
- Scalability can be an issue!!
- Examples: TDMA, FDMA, CDMA.

Demand assignment
- Resources are allocated on a short term basis, quite
often as a result of some data burst.
- Can be centrally controlled or distributed.
- Central control schemes (e.g. HIPERLAN/2,
MASCARA, DQRUMA) require a central node.
- Distributed systems require no central node, but can be
hard to maintain if nodes are mobile.

Random access
- No node co-ordination.
- Random elements; e.g. random packet arrival, random
timing for transmission.
- CSMA protocols fall also into this category, and so we
have still the high probability of collisions.
- Energy spent on collisions is wasted and packets often
have to be retransmitted.
- How can this problem be overcome?
Busy tone
- One way to solve collisions is the so called busy tone
- We have two different frequency channels; one for
data, and one for control.
- As soon as a node starts to receive it transmits a tone
on the control channel.
- Any nodes wanting to subsequently transmit listen for
the control channel tone first; if busy they will back off.

RTS/CTS
- IEEE 802.11 implements the RTS/CTS handshake
system. C
A B D
RTS
CTS
DATA
NAV
NAV

Balancing requirements for WSN
- Conserve energy… having lots of overheads goes
against this notion!!
- Avoid collisions!
- Reduce the cases where nodes overhear data packets.
- Intelligent amounts of idle listening.
- MAC protocols designed for WSN will tackle one or
more of these issues.

Lecture structure
- Low duty cycle protocols
- How about 802.11

Aims of low duty cycle
- Avoid spending as much time in idle mode as possible.
- Reduce communication activities to a minimum.
- Both points indicate low duty cycle, and therefore
energy conservation.
- There are problems however…
- Heavy loading and competition, high latency, and sleep
phases cannot be too short or we negate energy saving.

Periodic wakeup scheme
Listen period
Wakeup period
Sleep period
Time

S-MAC
- S-MAC = Sensor-MAC.
- Has mechanisms to avoid collisions, overhearing
and idle listening.
- Listen periods between neighbours are
synchronised so that data is not lost.
- During the listen period data can be transmitted
as well as received.

S-MAC listen period
Listen period
Wakeup period
Sleep period
SYNC RTS CTS

S-MAC clustering
- For SYNC, S-MAC forms virtual clusters of nodes.
- This means that we have border nodes… nodes
which have to follow two schedules due to being at
the border of two clusters.
- These nodes have to expend more energy than
nodes with single schedules.
schedules

S-MAC latency and timing
- S-MAC lets nodes stay asleep, but this increases
latency.
- Can use adaptive listening to roughly half per hop
latency.
- A drawback of S-MAC is that it cannot change the
length of the wakeup period to changing situations.
- Therefore in low activity situations we have a longer
listening period than necessary.
Lecture structure
- How about 802.11

Contention-based protocols
- A transmit opportunity can be taken by any
neighbouring nodes.
- If only one node tries its luck then the message will get
through onto the channel.
- If two or more neighbours try to transmit then they
have to try their luck against one another and compete.
- In unlucky cases collisions will occur and waste energy.

Collisions caused by contention
- Many CSMA protocols for WSNs consider the data
harvesting case: i.e. – many nodes transmitting
data back to a handful of sink nodes.
- Event occurrences tend to create lots of
simultaneous traffic and therefore lead to collisions.
- Therefore we need measures to prevent this
this…

Saving energy
- If an event occurs, all nodes are synchronised by the event.
- Hence we can use a random delay initially to delay packets,
and put the node to sleep during the delay.
- Carrier sensing periodically… if medium busy, back off.
- Wait
W it a random
d amountt off ti
time and
d ttry again.
i
- If the maximum number of retries is met the we drop the
packet.
packet

Lecture structure
- How about 802.11

Scheduling
- These schemes are not always directly aimed at idle
listening avoidance, but they do it implicitly and so are
useful for WSNs.
- With these protocols some sort of timing in involved in
order to schedule transmission and reception.
- Good and bad points to this type of protocol (TDMA is
one general purpose example)

The good and the bad…
- No collisions in theory…
- We don’t need any special mechanism to avoid
hidden terminals.
- Signalling traffic required to maintain schedules
via updates = energy usage.
- Time resynchronisation required frequently on
cheap nodes = energy usage.

LEACH
- LEACH = (Low-energy Adaptive Clustering
Hierarchy).
- Designed to use low energy sensor nodes.
- TDMA based.
- Includes clustering; data transmission is only
between peers and cluster heads
heads, not peer-peer.
peer peer
- Therefore, energy consumption can be high.

Lecture structure
- How about 802.11

IEEE 802.15.4
- Standard finalised in October 2003 by IEEE.
- Covers physical layer and MAC layer for WPAN;
can include WSN but not limited to this!
- Covers 868-868.6MHz,
868 868.6MHz, 905-928MHz
905 928MHz and 2.4-
2.4
2.485GHz.
- 20,
20 40 and 250kbit/s respectively.
respectively
- Not the same as Zigbee (http://www.zigbee.org/)!!

Network architecture
- Consists of full and reduced function devices (FFD
and RFD)
- A device (RFD or RRD) must be associated with a
PAN co-ordinator
co ordinator (FFD).
- RFD can only communicate with FFD.
- Usually utilise a star topology.
topology
- PAN co-ordinators use peer-peer.

PAN co-ordinator
- Manages a list of associated devices.
- Allocates short addresses to devices.
- Acts as a beacon (more on this later).
- Exchanges data with devices and other co
co-
ordinators.

Superframe structure
Active period Inactive period

(sleep)
Contention Guaranteed
Beacon access period time slots

Beacon vs. non-beaconed
- IEEE 802.15.4 can operate in beacon or non-
beaconed mode.
- In beaconed more the PAN co-ordinator schedules
time slots so we need time synchronisation.
- In non-beaconed mode CSMA-CA is used alone for
transmission and co
co-ordinators
ordinators must always be
switched on.

Beacon vs. non-beaconed
- IEEE 802.15.4 can operate in beacon or non-
beaconed mode.
- In beaconed more the PAN co-ordinator schedules
time slots so we need time synchronisation.
- In non-beaconed mode CSMA-CA is used alone for
transmission and co
co-ordinators
ordinators must always be
switched on.

Lecture structure
- How about 802.11

Bluetooth
- Here devices are organised in piconets; 1 master
with 7 slaves.
- Frequency hopping is used which requires tight
time synchronisation.
- We always need a master node so this nodes
battery can deplete quickly
quickly.
- Only 7 slaves per master… no good for dense WSN

IEEE 802.11x
- Requires nodes to always be listening, and for
them to be able to overhead for NAV setting.
- Has power saving, but not aimed at WSN type
applications.

Lecture structure
- How about 802.11

Class register
- I have noticed an odd number of people coming to
lectures, more than that currently enrolled on the
module via blackboard
- If you cannot now see the module on blackboard
could you please check your registration status!
- If you are here
here, and you know you shouldn
shouldn’tt be
please do not sign the register in future!

Summary (1)
- MAC important for co-ordinating communication,
particularly in WSN as collisions represent wasted
energy.
- Part of the data link layer if thinking in terms of
the OSI model.
- Energy conservation is key concern.
concern
- Overheads and environment influence MAC.

Summary (2)
- Large number of challenges for MAC.
- Classes of MAC protocol.
- RTS/CTS in 802.11.
- Low duty cycle (S-MAC)
(S MAC)
- Contention based (CSMA)
- Scheduling (TDMA,
(TDMA LEACH)

Summary (3)
- IEEE 802.15.4 is designed for low bit rate WPAN.
- Do not confuse this with Zigbee!!
- Bluetooth and 802.11 are not really suited to WSN
applications.

Class Test
- There will be a class test in two weeks time (Tuesday
February 16th, 2010), and it will take place inside the normal
lecture period.
- It will start at 9:30 and end at 11:30, so there is plenty of
ti
time tto answer questions!
ti !
- The test will include all material taught so far, and will be
multiple choice.
choice
- It is not an open book test, and it will contribute 20% of your
odu e mark.
module a .
Questions?
- If you have any questions, now is a good time!
- No further reading this week, just ensure you are
familiar with the concepts talked about in this
lecture
- Remember to start revising for the class test!!!

04 - Medium Access Control (MAC)

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04 – Medium Access Control

ENRECM158 – Medium Access Control (MAC) Dr Alex Mason Slide 1 of 61

[tdown ( Pactive + Psleep ) / 2 − ] Energy consumed getting to

[(t 2 − t1 − tdown) Psleep ] Energy consumed while

Psleep tdown tup

ENRECM158 – Medium Access Control (MAC) Dr Alex Mason Slide 3 of 61

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SYNC RTS CTS

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Active period Inactive period

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