No Communication Nodes Synchronization for a Low Power Consumption MAC Protocol in WSN based on IR-UWB

• Published in: Journal of Communications Software and Systems Vol. 10; no. 2; pp. 90 - 98
• Main Authors: Darif, Anouar, Saadane, Rachid, Aboutajdine, Driss
• Format: Journal Article Paper
• Language: English
• Published: Udruga za komunikacijske i informacijske tehnologije, Fakultet elektrotehnike, strojarstva i brodogradnje, Sveučilište u Splitu 01.06.2014; Croatian Communications and Information Society (CCIS)
• Subjects: IR-UWB; MiXiM; Packets delivery Ratio; Power Consumption; Synchronization; WideMac; WSN
• ISSN: 1845-6421; 1846-6079
• DOI: 10.24138/jcomss.v10i2.129

Synchronization is an important issue in multi hops Wireless Sensor Networks (WSN). Such networks are known by their limited resources of energy, storage, computation, and bandwidth. In addition if the networks entities are deployed with high density, it makes the synchronization mandatory for these networks. Impulse Radio Ultra Wide Band (IR-UWB) technology is a promising solution for this kind of networks due to its various advantages such as its robustness to severe multipath fading even in indoor environments, its low cost, low complexity, and low power consumption. To exploit the specific features of this technology, we need a convenient MAC protocol. WideMac was presented as a new low power consumption MAC protocol designed for WSN using IR-UWB transceivers. Because of the luck of synchronization in this protocol, this paper presents a solution for the synchronization problem especially in the case of no communication between the Network’s nodes. To implement and evaluate the proposed synchronization mechanism, we used MiXiM platform under OMNet++ Simulator.