Physical Sciences and Mathematics Commons^™

A Real-Time Wireless Sensor Media Access Control (Mac) Protocol, Barry W. Park

Theses and Dissertations

Wireless sensor networks are rapidly becoming a platform for applications such as battlefield monitoring, intelligence gathering, environmental monitoring, and emergency response. Inherent in these applications is a priority and urgency of the information or messages. This means the messages must be delivered in a timely manner for them to be useful. This research assigns a message priority level and provides high-priority messages quicker access to the channel. Using MICA2 sensors and a modified Media Access Control (MAC) layer, real-time message End-to-End (ETE) delay was reduced by 50 percent. Coupled with this decrease in delay, these same real-time messages also had …