MAC protocols with wake-up radio for wireless sensor networks: A review

Djiroun, Fatima Zahra; Djenouri, Djamel

Abstract

The use of a low-power wake-up radio in wireless sensor networks is considered in this paper, where relevant medium access control solutions are studied. A variety of asynchronous wake-up MAC protocols have been proposed in the literature, which take advantage of integrating a second radio to the main one for waking it up. However, a complete and a comprehensive survey particularly on these protocols is missing in the literature. This paper aims at filling this gap, proposing a relevant taxonomy, and providing deep analysis and discussions. From both perspectives of energy efficiency and latency reduction, as well as their operation principles, state-of-the-art wake-up MAC protocols are grouped into three main categories: (1) duty cycled wake-up MAC protocols; (2) non-cycled wake-up protocols; and (3) path reservation wake-up protocols. The first category includes two subcategories: (1) static wake-up protocols versus (2) traffic adaptive wake-up protocols. Non-cycled wake-up MAC protocols are again divided into two classes: (1) always-on wake-up protocol and (2) radio-triggered wake-up protocols. The latter is in turn split into two subclasses: (1) passive wake-up MAC protocols versus (2) ultra low power active wake-up MAC protocols. Two schemes could be identified for the last category, (1) broadcast based wake-up versus (2) addressing based wake-up. All these classes are discussed and analyzed in this paper, and canonical protocols are investigated following the proposed taxonomy.

• Journal Article Type: Article
• Acceptance Date: Sep 5, 2016
• Online Publication Date: Sep 27, 2016
• Publication Date: Jan 1, 2017
• Deposit Date: Jan 21, 2020
• Publicly Available Date: Jan 23, 2020
• Journal: IEEE Communications Surveys and Tutorials
• Print ISSN: 1553-877X
• Publisher: Institute of Electrical and Electronics Engineers
• Peer Reviewed: Peer Reviewed
• Volume: 19
• Issue: 1
• Pages: 587-618
• DOI: https://doi.org/10.1109/COMST.2016.2612644
• Public URL: https://uwe-repository.worktribe.com/output/5199806
• Publisher URL: https://ieeexplore.ieee.org/document/7577805