Adapting the duty cycle to traffic load in a preamble sampling MAC for WSNs: Formal specification and performance evaluation

Adaptive protocols for WSNs can significantly reduce the energy consumption spent for communication. Adaptive B-MAC+ is an asynchronous MAC protocol that adapts its operational parameters on the base of the observed traffic load: as the rate of incoming packets increases, the radio duty cycle is increased as well, whereas the length of preambles is shortened. The protocol is fully distributed and uses passive dissemination of information to reduce its overhead. Adaptive B-MAC+ has been formalized into an executable description using Stochastic Activity Networks. Starting from the formal specification a performance evaluation has been carried out: simulative results show significant improvements in terms of network lifetime and communication latency with respect to non adaptable protocols.