Implementation and deployment evaluation of the DMAMAC protocol for wireless sensor actuator networks

Abstract

The increased application of wireless technologies including Wireless Sensor Actuator Networks (WSAN) in industry has given rise to a plethora of protocol designs. These designs target metrics ranging from energy efficiency to real-time constraints. Protocol design typically starts with a requirements specification, and continues with analytic and model-based simulation analysis. State-of- the-art network simulators provide extensive physical environment emulation, but still have limitations due to model abstractions. Deployment testing on actual hardware is therefore vital in order to validate implementability and usability in the real environment. The contribution of this article is a deployment testing of the Dual-Mode Adaptive MAC (DMAMAC) protocol. DMAMAC is an energy efficient protocol recently proposed for real-time process control applications and is based on Time Division Multiple Access (TDMA) in conjunction with dual-mode operation. A main challenge in implementing DMAMAC is the use of a dynamic superframe structure. We have successfully implemented the protocol on the Zolertia Z1 platform using TinyOS (2x). Our scenario- based evaluation shows minimal packet loss and smooth mode-switch operation, thus indicating a reliable implementation of the DMAMAC protocol.