DynMAC: a resistant MAC protocol to coexistence in wireless sensor networks

Abstract

The growth of mobile and ubiquitous computing has increased the demand for wireless communications, which in turn raises interference levels and spectrum pollution, causing problems of network coexistence. The coexistence assurance between these devices and wireless sensor networks is a big challenge. This paper proposes a new medium access protocol, DynMAC (Dynamic MAC), which uses mechanisms of dynamic channel reconfiguration, recovery from lost links and reconfiguration of transmission parameters based on the properties of the cognitive radios, to deal with this problem. Simulations and experiments using a real WSN testbed, were performed to validate our protocol. Results show that the proposed mechanisms solve the WSN configuration problems, in noisy and interference environments, and enable the coexistence with different networks and devices operating in the same frequency spectrum, while maintaining application requirements in critical deployment scenarios.