MAC Protocols researched for Wireless Sensor Networks

Wireless sensor networks are appealing to researchers due to their wide range of application potential in areas such as target detection and tracking, environmental monitoring, industrial process monitoring, and tactical systems. However, lower sensing ranges result in dense networks, which bring the necessity to achieve an efficient medium access protocol subject to power constraints.In this paper, we describe several MAC protocols, classified as either contention based or schedule based, proposed for sensor networks while listing the advantages and disadvantages of each.