IJRET: International Journal of Research in Engineering and Technology

eISSN: 2319-1163
2319
| pISSN: 2321-7308

A SURVEY ON BANDWIDTH ALLOCATION SCHEMES IN WSNS

USING TDMA BASED MAC PROTOCOL

Ratna B. Patil1, S. K. Padaganur2, J. D. Mallapur3, Namrata Bannur4

M. Tech (DCN) Student, Department of ECE, B.L.D.E.As Dr. P.G.Halakatti CET Vijayapur, Karnataka, India.
[email protected]
2
Assistant Professor, Department of ECE, B.L.D.E.As Dr. P.G.Halakatti CET Vijayapur, Karnataka, India.
[email protected]
3
Professor, ECE Department of BEC, Bagalkot, Karnataka, India
[email protected]
4
M. Tech (DCN) Student, Department of ECE, B.L.D.E.As Dr. P.G.Halakatti CET, Vijayapur, Karnataka, India.
[email protected]
1

Abstract

Wireless
ireless sensors networks play an important role in wireless communication due to its various advantageous characteristics and
applications. The real time applications of WSNs such as bandwidth sensitivity and sharing priority especially their cap
capacity of
artificial intelligence between sensor node communications are very important factors. The limited battery power of nodes, lesser
storage capacity, processing speed, collision between the nodes, overhearing, idle listening and limited bandwidth al
allocation are
the major constraints of wireless sensor networks. There are many approaches to meet these actual requirements of WSNs. In th
this
paper we study designing of MAC layer by considering the bandwidth in terms of time slot allocation in a pure TDMA/
TDMA/CSMA
based networks, which provides considerable amount of profit by avoiding collision, overhearing idle listening and finally
provides energy efficiency. Bandwidth allocation can be studied by considering the different types of network topologies.

Keywords: DSN, WSN, MAC, TDMA.

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1. INTRODUCTION

A wireless sensor network (WSN)) is also known as a

wireless sensor and actuator network (WSAN). These
networks are defined as the group of large number of tiny,
autonomous, low power, low cost and multifunctional
sensor nodes deployed in the environment depending upon
the requirement. We can see the sensors as depicted in Fig 1.

know the physical and environmental conditions,

conditio
such as
temperature, pressure, etc. We
W can see the architecture of
sensor network in Fig 2. A wireless sensor network (WSN)
consisting of sensor nodes, monitors
monitor the physical conditions
of the environment where they are deployed and gather the
physical environmental parameters
param
to communicate with
base station [1]. The sensor nodes are strongly deployed in
regions where they guide many physical phenomena such as
vibration, pressure, temperature, movement of objects,
humidity, light conditions, radiations, and noise levels
depending upon the location.
location The sensor nodes make selforganization in order to form an Ad-hoc
Ad
network after the
deployment.

Fig 1. WSN nodes

The WSNs can be popularly classified as terrestrial,
underground,
aquatic,
multimedia,
and
mobile
communication fields depending upon the application such
as defense, forest, medical science and industry in order to

Fig 2. Architecture
rchitecture of WSN
Sensor nodes are resource constraint, as these are equipped
with batteries with limited power, tiny microprocessors/
microcontrollers, low power transceivers, and sensors for

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IJRET: International Journal of Research in Engineering and Technology

gathering information about the deployed environment.
Individual sensor nodes in wireless sensor networks are
inherently unreliable and sensor will have very limited
capabilities to reach the real time requirement and real-time
guarantees. There is a new development in the research area
of WSNs called Distributed or dispersed sensor networks
(DSNs) [12] that has recently emerged as an important
research area. This development has been spurred by
advances in sensor technology and computer networking. It
is economically feasible to implement DSNs, but there are
several technical challenges that must be achieved. There
after we can use them for gathering the day-todays
information in increased complexity. We can see the block
diagram of DSN as depicted in Fig.3. The ultimate goal of
DSN or WSN is to provide more reliable services and to
avoid end-to-end delays, with effective allocation of
bandwidth and least consumption of energy by the sensors
in the underlying Sensor network.
The primary goal of sensor networks is to make decisions or
acquire knowledge based on the information fused from
distributed sensor nodes. In the bottom, sensor node senses
the data or information from different sensing events or
from different conditions. Initially data processing is done
by data aggregation, which can be carried out at the local
node i.e. from sensor to cluster heads, to generate local
event detection result. This resulting intermediate
information will then be integrated or fused at an upper
processing unit to derive knowledge and help making
decisions.

eISSN: 2319-1163 | pISSN: 2321-7308

Cost of sensor nodes depends on the size of the sensor. If the

sensors size is shorter, then price of nodes will be cheaper,
so that more sensors can be deployed to achieve quality
through quantity.
In WSN the sensed data from the each sensor nodes may
take transmission in multiple paths to reach the destination.
The total available channel bandwidth will be portioned, and
the response time it takes is very large [5]. In the real time
applications of WSNs, the wireless sensor networks are
sensitive to allocated bandwidth and needs higher share of
bandwidth for higher priority data to meet the dead line
requirements. Higher Priority data should be allowed to use
maximum share of bandwidth to achieve the deadline
requirements. MAC layer gives assistance is that, the
routing algorithm made in such a way that the multiple noninterleaving and prioritized paths must be made available to
the routing table. In the following study, we discuss the
MAC protocol that is based on TDMA method. With the use
of TDMA, the MAC protocol guarantees to overcome the
channel access delay binding the end-to-end transmission
time of the network layer routing protocol.
In the following sections, we will study in detail MAC use
in WSN and the factors to be considered for the effective
performance of MAC protocol in section 2. In addition, we
will discuss the major classification of MAC protocols in
section 3; we describe general bandwidth allocation and
scheduling scheme in WSN in section 4. And in section 5
we study the TDMA based MAC with its advantages and
drawbacks And later in section 6 we conclude about the
literature study about WSNs.

2. MEDIUM ACCESS CONTROL IN WSN

Fig 3. Block diagram of DSN

MAC is one of the major issues in designing of WSNs.

MAC is used firstly, to avoid collision of data that is caused
by the transmission of data packets over same medium when
transmission is done between two or more sensor nodes.
Second reason is to provide fair and efficient share of
bandwidth resource among multiple sensor nodes. Hence,
MAC plays a very important role in network operation and
performance of WSNs. Some important parameters that
must be considered while designing MAC protocol are
energy efficiency: batteries power the sensor nodes and it is
very difficult to recharge the batteries or reallocate the
power to the senor nodes once they are deployed. Scalability
and adaptability: a good MAC protocol should be adjustable
to changes in sensor nodes. i.e capabable of providing
service to newly updated sensor nodes along with deployed
ones. Accommodate such changes gracefully, latency: refers
to delay between the packet transmission from sender to
receiver or source to destination. Throughput: is successful
transmission of data from sender to receiver in a given time
interval. Channel utilization: is the effective utilization of
allocated band of frequency in a channel. In addition,
fairness: the ability of sensor nodes to equally distribute or
share the common transmission channel among themselves.

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3. CLASSIFICATION OF MAC

There are many types of MAC protocols but depending

upon the requirement and application, we can categorize
into contention-based MAC protocol and schedule-based
MAC protocol

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capability than destination devices and direct end-to-end

communication between end devices is not allowed.
Moreover, the problem of bandwidth allocation for
multichip topology networks been found NP-complete.

I] Contention-based MAC protocol

In contention-based MAC protocols, there will be common

medium between all nodes for transmission of data or
information. Thus, there may be a chance of occurrence of
collision during the contention process. In order to avoid the
collision, shared channel access can be arbitrated through
some probabilistic coordination. Before transmission the
sender listens to the shared medium, waits a random period.
Suppose if the medium is found busy and then retries the
transmission after some time. Therefore, the contention
based MAC is better for networks having contention and
burst traffic is expected.
The typical examples of contention-based MAC protocols
are ALOHA (Additive Link On-line Hawaii System) and
CSMA (Carrier Sense Multiple Access).

Fig 4. Hidden and Exposed terminal

5. TDMA-BASED MAC PROTOCOL

Among the critical issues in design of wireless sensor

network, MAC plays the first role.

II] Schedule-based MAC Protocols

In schedule-based MAC protocol, shared medium used for

transmission is divided in respect to either frequency
(Frequency Division Multiple Access) or time (Time
Division Multiple Access) or orthogonal pseudo - noise
codes (Code Division Multiple Access). By this way,
different nodes can access the shared medium without
interfering with each other and thus effectively avoids
collisions. Since most of the Schedule-based MAC protocols
are TDMA-based they consume less energy i.e. more energy
efficient as compared to Contention-based MAC protocols,
because contention based protocols waste energy in
collisions and idle listening in the network.

4.

BANDWIDTH

SCHEDULING IN WSN

ALLOCATION

Fig 4. TDMA Frame Structure

In TDMA based MAC protocol, time is divided into
different time frames which are further divided into fixed
number of time slots we can see the frame structure of
TDMA in Fig 4.

AND

The various multiplexing techniques such as FDMA,

TDMA, and CSMA used to overcome the bandwidth
allocation problem in wired networks and cellular networks
have been used in WSNs as well. However due to the
limitations of energy and cost most of the implementations
consider CSMA and TDMA based approaches. Type of
network topology used also plays an important role in
allocation of bandwidth due to interference associated with
different types of topologies in WSNs.
WSNs rely on three different types of networks star, cluster
tree and mesh. Due to least hopping property of star
topology it is least complex, because a star topology will
have central coordinator device and all the surrounding
neighbors are with single hop distance so they can listen to
everyone within network, there wont be any problems such
as hidden node exposed or shortage [6] as shown in fig 6.
We will assume that a coordinator device has more energy

Fig 5. TDMA Based-MAC protocol

In TDMA each node is allocated with different time slots,
different time-frame and each node is allowed to transmit
only during the permitted time-slot. A node depending on
schedules of neighboring node may remain in sleep mode
when it is neither ready to transmit or nor to receive data
packets, that is a node can switch off its transceiver
operation and conserve the considerable amount of energy
which makes the system energy efficient.

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IJRET: International Journal of Research in Engineering and Technology

eISSN: 2319-1163 | pISSN: 2321-7308

In contention based channels due to common medium there

may not be effective utilization of allocated bandwidth, due
to the collision. There may be chances of retransmission of
data packets that leads to loss utilization of more energy
resource it can be a cause for energy constraint problem. As
the TDMA is scheduling based, it provides delay guarantee,
avoids collisions due to allocation of time slots with
different time frames. Along with these advantages TDMA
has some of the negative factors as well. It uses topology
information, limited adaptability and scalability to changes
in WSN nodes and to avoid the end-to-end delay time
synchronization is needed.

CONCLUSION

The survey presents the detailed overview of WSNs with its

advantages and associated constraints; we have studied use
of MAC in WSN and the factors that have to be considered
while designing the MAC protocols. In this paper we also
described the major classifications of MAC protocol that are
classified depending upon the requirement and application
and the paper describes the approach of TDMA based MAC
protocol with its overcomes in energy constraints of WSN
such as bandwidth efficiency, collision, idle listening,
overhearing etc as compared to the other multiplexing
techniques such as CDMA, FDMA. The TDMA is better
both in performance as well cost of deployment. We studied
the bandwidth allocation dependency of WSNs with the
considerations of different network topologies. We can
conclude that along with these advantages characteristics,
TDMA also has some of the negative factors. So in future
study, the problem of synchronization TDMA should
overcome to meet the real time requirements of WSNs.

REFERENCES

[1]. Priority based bandwidth allocation in

Wireless sensor networks (IJCNC) vol.6, no.6 Nov 2014
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MILCOM, pp.1-5, San Diego, ca, 2008.
[3]. Analysis of QoS in wireless sensor network (IJARCET)
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[4]. bandwidth assignment in a cluster-based wireless sensor
network WCE 2013, July 3 - 5, 2013, London, U.K.
[5]. T Qureshi and D.A.Zighed, Proposition and Simulation
of a Network Layer based Hard Real time
Protocol for Wireless Sensor Networks, in Proc. of IEEE
Mobile and Wireless Communications
[6]. Summit, pp. 1-5, Budapest, Hungary, 2007.Fair end-toend bandwidth distribution in Wireless sensor networks
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Sensor Network Website: www.ijetae.com (ISSN 22502459, ISO 9001:2008 Certified Journal,
[8] A survey on Bandwidth resource Allocation and
scheduling in wireless sensor Networks 2009 International
Conference on Network-Based Information System.

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