Hierarchical Real-Time MAC Protocol for (m,k)-firm Stream in Wireless Sensor Networks

In wireless sensor networks (WSNs), both efficient energy management and Quality of Service (QoS) are important issues for some applications. For creating robust networks, real-time services are usually employed to satisfy the QoS requirements. In this paper, we proposed a hierarchical real-time MAC (medium access control) protocol for (m,k)-firm constraint in wireless sensor networks shortly called HRTS-MAC. The proposed HRTS-MAC protocol is based on a dynamic priority assignment by (m,k)-firm constraint. In a tree structure topology, the scheduling algorithm assigns uniform transmitting opportunities to each node. The paper also provides experimental results and comparison of the proposed protocol with E_DBP scheduling algorithm.