Cross-Layer MAC Protocol for Semantic Wireless Sensor Network

Wireless sensor networks (WSN) are ad-hoc wireless networks used in many domains involving the analysis of various properties. Along with the growth in the number of deployments of WSNs, there has been an increase in the size of the networks as well. These systems tend to generate a tremendous amount of data that require further processing and analysis. Transmission of data requires a huge amount of energy considering that the components are powered by tiny batteries with a short life cycle. Consequently, energy efficiency is a dominant factor in the performance measure of WSNs. One major contributor to the overall energy consumption of a WSN is overhearing, a condition, in which the same data is picked up and transmitted by multiple nodes. Reducing overhearing results in a marked decrement in energy usage. This paper proposes to use semantic technology for the observation and collection of sensor data. With the use of an ontology, sensor nodes can be remarkably interoperable and configurable in the receipt and transmission of semantic data. Using this interoperability, we introduce asynchronous semantic preamble listening to avoid overhearing in a semantic sensor network. Performance comparisons to LPL by real experiments show stark improvements in energy consumption.