A Review of Multi-Channel Medium Access Control Protocols for Wireless Sensor Networks

Abstract

Wireless Sensor Networks (WSNs) are witnessing a momentum spread especially with the growth of the Internet of Things (IoT) paradigm. Indeed, WSNs are considered as the main enabling infrastructure for IoT networks. Nowadays, the emerging WSNs applications require not only long network lifespan but also considerably high data rate. Consequently, conceiving Multichannel MAC protocols that save the scarceenergy budget of sensor nodes while providing high network throughput is crucial for the emerging WSNs applications. In this paper, a thorough review of recent multichannel MAC protocols is provided along with a classification framework to deeply understand the design aspects for each protocol.