• Journal of the Institute of Electronics and Information Engineers
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• v.49 no.12
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• pp.45-55
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• 2012

The energy efficiency is extremely significant in Wireless Sensor Networks (WSN) which deliver the data sensed in the sensor field, using wireless communications. Under the characteristics of WSN, many MAC protocols employ the Duty Cycle mechanism which continuously operates Wakeup and Sleep periods, for the energy efficiency. However, constant Wakeup period in general Duty Cycle incurs the limited performance of the energy efficiency and the receiving ratio. For addressing this, we design and propose a new scheme called Variable Wakeup Period, considering local traffic conditions. Our scheme enhances receiving ratio by increasing Wakeup period under the high traffic condition, and makes high energy efficiency by decreasing Wakeup period under the otherwise condition. In addition, we evaluate the performance of our scheme by performing the simulation, which experiments the previous synchronous and asynchronous MAC protocols, and which also experiments the same protocols with the proposed scheme, for comparative evaluations.