2015 IEEE 26th International Symposium on Personal, Indoor and Mobile Radio Communications - (PIMRC): Mobile and Wireless

Networks

Overview of MAC Protocols for Energy Harvesting

Wireless Sensor Networks
Parisa Ramezani

Mohammad Reza Pakravan

School of Electrical Engineering

Sharif University of Technology
Tehran, Iran
Email: p ramezani@alum.sharif.edu

School of Electrical Engineering

Sharif University of Technology
Tehran, Iran
Email: pakravan@sharif.edu

AbstractWireless Sensor Networks (WSNs) have been weaved

into the fabric of our daily lives. The foremost impediment in
the rapid development of these networks is the energy limitation
which inhibits them from meeting specic application requirements. Recently, the advances in energy harvesting technology
have made it possible to replenish the energy of sensors via
external sources. Energy Harvesting-Wireless Sensor Networks
(EH-WSNs) are being transformed from a visionary concept into
reality. However, this concept is still in its infancy and calls for
extensive research to cater to the needs of WSNs. For future
progress of EH-WSNs, Medium Access Control (MAC) layer
has undoubtedly a decisive role to play. A well-designed MAC
protocol can manage the channel access in such a way that the
harvested energy is utilized efciently and the performance is
maximized. Due to the importance of medium access control
in EH-WSNs, in this paper, we concentrate on the design
aspects of MAC protocols for energy harvesting sensor networks.
We introduce the characteristics of a properly-designed MAC
protocol for EH-WSNs and provide a survey on MAC protocols
which have been explicitly designed for energy harvesting sensor
networks. We elaborate the advantages and disadvantages of each
protocol, wishing to help future designers to learn from the merits
and demerits of the existing ideas and propose a more robust
solution which can be seamlessly integrated into WSNs.
Index TermsWireless sensor networks, medium access control, energy harvesting.

I. I NTRODUCTION
Wireless Sensor Networks (WSNs) consist of hundreds or
even thousands of tiny sensor nodes having the capability
of sensing the environment and report the sensed data to a
data center usually called as sink. Numerous applications have
been dened and developed for WSNs, all with the aim of
making our lives safer and easier. Smart healthcare [1], disaster
management [2], and structural health monitoring [3], [4] are
some of the most popular application domains of WSNs.
The small size of sensors prevents them from using large
energy supplies. In consequence, they are equipped with
small low-powered batteries which bring a limited operational
lifetime for sensors and subsequently the whole network.
Frequent battery replacement is a solution, but in most cases
it is impractical. In addition, one of the main objectives of
WSNs is to work independently, i.e., without any human
involvement. Another solution is extending the lifetime of
sensor networks through minimizing energy consumption.

978-1-4673-6782-0/15/$31.00 2015 IEEE

During the last decade, numerous methods and protocols have

been developed for conserving as much energy as possible in
order to postpone the unavoidable battery exhaustion of sensor
nodes.
Recently, the advent of energy harvesting for WSNs has
relaxed the need for energy consumption minimization. Energy
harvesting is the process of collecting energy from external
sources (e.g., solar power, thermal energy, and electromagnetic
elds) and converting it into electricity. Utilizing energy
harvesting, sensors can live for very long periods which is
desirable for applications that require long-term functionality
of sensors.
MAC layer has always played a crucial role in the design
of WSNs. The performance of the network in terms of
throughput, delay, fairness, energy consumption, etc. is largely
dependent on how the MAC has been developed. Traditionally,
energy conservation has been the focal point of any MAC
protocol for WSNs to keep the sensors operative for longer
periods. With energy efciency being the most important performance criterion, other metrics such as throughput, latency,
etc. have been left as minor design considerations. With the
emergence of energy harvesting for WSNs, concerns related
to lifetime will be reduced. The goal of Energy HarvestingWireless Sensor Networks (EH-WSNs) is to take advantage
of the available energy to enhance the performance of the
network. In this paper, we investigate the fundamentals of the
MAC protocol design for EH-WSNs and review the existing
works in this area.
The remainder of this paper is organized as follows: In
section II, we discuss the importance of energy harvesting for
wireless sensor networks. Section III presents the requirements
of EH-WSNs and a well-designed MAC protocol for such
networks. Sections IV summarizes the MAC protocols of
EH-WSNs with a detailed discussion on their strength and
weakness points. Finally, we conclude the paper in section V.
II. E NERGY H ARVESTING W IRELESS S ENSOR N ETWORKS
The ever-increasing demand of WSNs has rendered them
an inevitable part of our daily lives. With the emerging
applications of WSNs, traditional energy conservation methods
are losing their credibility since the energy needs are much
wider than what energy-conservative techniques can afford. In

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particular, new applications require longer lifetimes of sensor

networks, but conventional disposable batteries are unable to
provide sensor nodes with enduring lifespans. Yet, limited
lifetime is not the only detriment of Battery-Powered WSNs
(BP-WSNs). In such networks, the performance is always
traded off for lifetime extensions as a result of which WSNs
cannot provide appropriate services. Furthermore, disposable
batteries used in sensors can harm the environment. Indeed,
heavy metals contained in batteries lead to negative environmental impacts if batteries are not disposed properly. The
solution to all of these problems is energy harvesting. Energy
harvesting resolves the energy scarcity issue since the energy
can be replenished whenever a shortage occurs. Besides, the
elimination of the energy bottleneck helps to improve network
performance (e.g., increasing throughput, reducing latency).
Further, rechargeable batteries and supercapacitors employed
for energy storage in harvesting-capable sensors are more
environmentally-friendly than disposable batteries. For these
reasons, EH-WSNs are going to replace BP-WSNs; however,
new challenges need to be overcome before this concept
is widely accepted. The main challenge is predicting and
estimating the amount of harvestable energy and enhancing
the network performance in such a way that the energy level
remains sufciently high until the next recharge cycle [5].
Figure 1 shows the block diagram of an EH-powered wireless
sensor node.

Energy
Harvester

Energy Storage
& Power
Management

IV. MAC P ROTOCOLS FOR E NERGY H ARVESTING

W IRELESS S ENSOR N ETWORKS
Since the concept of energy harvesting for wireless sensor networks has emerged, environmental energy harvesting
has been the center of attention in many research domains.
Indeed, this kind of energy collection seems to be the most
straightforward way to solve the traditional issue of limited
lifetime which casts a shadow over the acceptable performance
of WSNs. Especially, solar energy has been adopted as a
promising source of energy to power sensor nodes. Though
unavailable during the nighttime and barely available in cloudy
days, the almost predictable nature of solar energy has made
it a viable energy supply for the long-lasting WSNs.
Another way to power sensor nodes is to utilize RF energy
transfer, the technique of converting RF signals into electricity
[8]. Due to space limitations, in this paper, we only cover the
MAC protocols designed for environmentally-powered WSNs,
where sensor nodes use solar energy or other ambient energy
sources to collect their required energy. Table I summarizes
the useful techniques of the surveyed protocols.

Transceiver

External Energy
Sources

thus, especially in mobile sensor networks, nodes experience

different energy conditions due to moving from one place
to another. Not only solar energy but most environmental
energy sources show variable and uncontrollable behavior.
Therefore, an appropriate design should take into account the
variability of nodes' harvesting rates in different times. This is
not specic to the design of MAC protocols; energy harvesting
properties should also be considered in the design of routing
protocols, source rate control techniques, task scheduling
algorithms, etc. which are beyond the scope of this paper.
In this paper, we review some of the proposed EH-WSN
MAC protocols and evaluate their key attributes. We include high throughput, low latency, scalability, and fairness
as important requirements of a satisfactory MAC protocol
for EH-WSNs. Throughput and latency are the main design
considerations of EH-WSNs because the elimination of energy deciency allows performance improvement in network
operation. Further, a WSN has to perform well in different
node densities and trafc loads, so, scalability is a key feature
of any MAC protocol for wireless sensor networks. Moreover,
as long as there is no critical data in the network and the nodes
have identical trafc patterns, all the users must be given equal
opportunity to send or receive data.

Microprocessor

Sensor

Fig. 1. Components of an EH-powered wireless sensor

III. R EQUIREMENTS OF EH-WSN S

The foremost requisite of EH-WSNs is to keep the system in
energy-neutrality [6] which is achieved when the rate at which
energy is harvested fully compensates for the consumed energy
[7]. A sensor node that satises energy-neutrality conditions
is said to be in Energy Neutral Operation (ENO). To keep
the nodes and consequently the network in ENO, the system
should be able to adapt itself to different energy harvesting
conditions. Take solar energy for example. There are high
variations in energy harvesting rates in different months of
the year and different times of the day. What is more, the
energy rate is space-dependent. There might be some places
exposed to direct sunlight and some in permanent shadows;

A. Probabilistic Polling for WSNs Powered by Ambient Energy

Harvesting
In [9], Eu et al. propose a probabilistic polling MAC for
single-hop WSNs. First, the authors do some experiments
which reveal that the rate of energy harvesting is dependent
on many factors, namely, the time of the day, the location of
the energy harvester, and also the source of energy (i.e., sun,
uorescent lamp, or thermal). As we mentioned in section III,
this variety in energy harvesting rates necessitates some kind
of adaptation in the MAC protocol to capture the dynamic
characteristics of the harvesting process. They incorporate

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TABLE I
S UMMARY OF THE T ECHNIQUES USED IN MAC PROTOCOLS FOR EH-WSN S
Technique
Contention Probability Adjustment
Duty-cycle Adjustment
Load Balancing
Energy-aware Deep Sleeping
Contention Reduction
Differentiated Contention Window
Wake-up time Awareness

Description
Adjusting the probability of packet transmission based on the energy
harvesting rates and/or the number of active nodes.
Adjusting the duty-cycle of the nodes based on their energy levels.
Distributing the load among nodes based on their energy levels.
Letting low-energy devices go to deep sleep so that they can harvest
enough energy.
Forcing some devices to go to sleep and leave the contention.
Assigning different contention windows to different nodes in order to
prioritize some of them over others.
Incorporating the next wake-up schedule in the beacon to inform
potential senders about when the beacon transmission will take place.

the harvesting dynamicity into the contention probability announced by the sink node. The sink periodically sends a
polling packet containing a contention probability, pc . Upon
receiving this packet, each sensor node generates a random
number between 0 and 1. If the generated number is smaller
than pc , then, the node will be allowed to transmit. Otherwise,
it will wait for the next polling packet. When the node nds
out that its residual energy is not sufcient for transmitting
one data packet, it will go to the charging state until the
required energy is harvested. The novelty of the proposed
MAC protocol is its dynamic probability adjustment. The
authors apply an Additive Increase Multiplicative Decrease
(AIMD) approach to adapt the contention probability to the
number of active nodes. In case of data packets collision,
the sink decreases the contention probability assuming that
the number of active sensors is more than what expected.
Inversely, when the sink receives no data packet in response to
polling, it increases the probability for the next polling cycle.
Advantages: High throughput, scalability, and fairness are
the most eminent advantages of the proposed probabilistic polling. Thanks to its contention probability adjustment
scheme, the protocol is able to effectively resolve collisions
and achieve high throughput. Moreover, this adjustment makes
the protocol scalable as the contention probability can be tuned
according to the density level of the network. Finally, since all
the nodes have equal probability of transmitting their packets,
the resources are allocated fairly among them.
Disadvantages: Though probabilistic polling is able to
respond properly to dynamic conditions, it takes a lot of time
for the algorithm to stabilize in frequently changing conditions. For instance, when nodes join and leave the network
frequently, the contention probability is subject to frequent
increase and decrease, so, sensor nodes may often fail to
transmit data to the sink due to either facing collisions in case
of a high contention probability or not having the opportunity
to transmit in case of a low contention probability. In such
scenarios, packets suffer long delays; in addition, energy and
bandwidth are wasted until the apposite contention probability
is found.

Protocol(s)
Probabilistic Polling for Single-hop
WSNs [9], EH-MAC [12]
ODMAC [10], LEB-MAC [15]
ODMAC [10], LEB-MAC [15]
DeepSleep [13]
DeepSleep [13], EL-MAC [14]
DeepSleep [13], EL-MAC [14]
LEB-MAC [15]

B. ODMAC (On Demand Medium Access Control)

ODMAC [10] is an on demand receiver-initiated MAC protocol for energy harvesting sensor networks. Each ODMAC receiver periodically sends out beacon, declaring its willingness
to receive packets. After the beacon is heard by the waiting
senders, the data transmission will take place. ODMAC uses
duty-cycle adjustment and opportunistic forwarding to adapt
itself to different harvesting circumstances. The former which
is divided into beacon period adjustment and sensing period
adjustment, is used to keep the nodes in the ENO-Max state
(the state in which the nodes preserve energy-neutrality, while
at the same time, the performance is maximized), making
a balance between energy consumption and performance.
A node which nds an excess in its harvested energy can
decrease either the beacon interval (the time between two
consecutive beacon transmissions) or the sensing interval (the
time between two consecutive sensing operations) depending
on the application requirements. In case of energy shortage,
the node can increase either of the intervals. In opportunistic
forwarding, each node maintains a list of potential relay nodes
and sends its packet as soon as it receives a beacon from one
of the list members. This eliminates the need to wait for a
particular receiver.
In [11], a new mode of operation, named as binding mode,
is dened for scenarios where the input energy is extremely
low. In low-energy conditions, a transmitter node gives up
opportunistic forwarding and switches to binding mode in
which it selects a particular receiver and binds to its dutycycle.
Advantages: Through duty-cycle adjustment, ODMAC
takes advantage of energy harvesting to improve sensing reliability and end-to-end latency. Opportunistic forwarding helps
the nodes to deliver their packets as fast as possible, so, less energy is wasted on idle-listening and packets experience much
lower delays in comparison to conventional receiver-initiated
strategies in which the sender spends a lot of time waiting for
its desired beacon. Additionally, ODMAC distributes the load
among the sensors based on their energy levels. Low-energy
sensor nodes increase their beacon intervals according to
the duty-cycle adjustment mechanism. Consequently, energyrich nodes carry the burden of data forwarding on behalf of
low-energy ones, conforming to the opportunistic forwarding

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scheme.
Disadvantages: ODMAC does not employ any prediction
approach in its duty-cycle adjustment. The nodes change their
duty-cycle intervals without being aware of the future available energy. For example, a node currently having additional
energy may face energy shortage in the near future due to
harvesting dynamics. Decreasing the beacon or sensing period
may prevent this node from doing its future ordinary tasks.
Furthermore, the added mode of operation of ODMAC, i.e.,
binding mode, requires a transmitter node to know its intended
receiver's duty-cycle accurately which may not be feasible in
an energy harvesting sensor network.

C. EH-MAC (Probabilistic Polling for Multi-hop EH-WSNs)

EH-MAC [12] is the multi-hop version of the probabilistic
protocol described in section IV-A. Each receiver node periodically broadcasts polling packets to request data. All polling
nodes have to wait for a random time between 0 and tmax
and send out polling packets only if the channel is not busy
during this time. The contention probability, pc , is included
in the polling packet which determines the probability that a
node is allowed to transmit. In addition to AIMD, the authors
present ENAN (Estimated Number of Active Neighbors) for
contention probability adjustment. This method is based on
the estimation of each receiver node's active neighbors. If the
estimated number is nest , then the contention probability will
be set as n-1
est . In case of a collision, the receiver increases nest
by 1 and adjusts the probability accordingly. Similarly, when
none of the senders transmit their data packets, the receiver
assumes that the estimated number is higher than the actual
number of active neighbors, so, nest is decreased by 1 and as
a consequence, the contention probability is increased.
Advantages: Similar to the single-hop probabilistic polling
protocol, EH-MAC yields high throughput and fairness, and
is able to adapt to different node densities, trafc loads, and
energy harvesting rates.
Disadvantages: In high network densities, a node has to
wait for a long time before it is allowed to transmit because
the contention probability is very low. In a multi-hop scenario,
packets experience long delays in each hop which causes the
end-to-end delay to be very high. Furthermore, as mentioned
for the single-hop version, in scenarios where the topology is
exposed to frequent changes, the algorithm may take a very
long time to converge. In such cases, resources are wasted during the contention probability adjustment procedure. When the
polling node sends a polling packet and receives no response
(due to low network densities or low energy harvesting rates)
or receives corrupted packets (due to multiple nodes replying
to the poll at the same time), time, bandwidth, and energy
are wasted without bringing any useful outcome, especially,
the latter case (packet collisions) is very detrimental for a
sensor network as it lowers throughput, channel utilization,
and energy efciency and adds to packet delays.

D. DeepSleep: IEEE 802.11 Enhancement for Energy harvesting M2M communications

Machine-to-machine (M2M) communication is a newlyemerged paradigm and refers to the autonomous communication between interconnected heterogeneous machines. As the
MAC protocol design for M2M is very similar to that of WSN,
most of the proposed schemes for M2M communication are
inspired by the MAC protocols of WSNs. Here, we review
DeepSleep, A MAC scheme that supports a large number of
energy harvesting M2M devices.
DeepSleep [13] is an enhancement to IEEE 802.11 Power
Saving Mode (PSM). In IEEE 802.11 PSM, time is divided
into beacon intervals (BI) and each BI is composed of ATIM
(Ad hoc Trafc Indication Map) window and data transmission
interval. When a device has data destined to another device,
it rst sends an ATIM request message and waits for ATIM
ack. The pairs, who have exchanged ATIM request and ack
successfully, stay awake for the rest of the BI and other devices
go to sleep mode to save energy. This power saving mechanism
of IEEE 802.11 is efcient as long as the number of devices
is limited. However, in large scale networks, the mechanism
experiences severe contention which ends in energy wastage
due to overhearing, idle listening, and collisions. DeepSleep
is devised to solve this problem by its Energy-Aware Deep
Sleeping and Controlled Access mechanisms.
In Energy-Aware Deep Sleeping, a Deep Sleep is activated
whenever the energy level of a device falls below the threshold
EDeepSleep . The device sleeps deeply for nBP beacon intervals,
while at the same time, harvesting energy from ambient
sources. To further boost the network performance in more
congested M2M networks, DeepSleep with Controlled Access
is proposed. In Controlled Access, when a device wakes up
and nds packets in its buffer, it should rst generate a random
number between 0 and 1, and compare it to the predened
value of Psleep . A DeepSleep event is triggered if the generated
number is lower than Psleep . In both the mechanisms, devices
that wake up after sleeping deeply will be assigned with
smaller contention windows so as to ensure their priority in
accessing the channel.
Advantages: A benecial outcome of Energy-Aware Deep
Sleeping and Controlled Access is the reduction in the number
of active users due to some devices going to sleep, leaving
others in a lower contention level. This reduces collisions, idle
listening, and overhearing. Furthermore, DeepSleep is able to
achieve good fairness. Some devices sleep longer than others,
so they are prohibited from accessing the channel for a long
time; instead, upon waking up, they are assigned with shorter
contention windows, ensuring that their chance for capturing
the medium is higher.
Disadvantages: In Controlled Access, the sleeping probability is the same for all devices, that is, even those having
woken up from a Deep Sleep may be forced to sleep deeply
again. Although the protocol favors deeply-slept devices by
giving them shorter contention windows, they have to get
the permission to stay awake before transiting to the channel

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access procedure. Consequently, successive Deep Sleeping

events may lead to increased delays. Another limitation is that
DeepSleep is developed for single-hop networks, where data
packets are just one hop away from their ultimate destination, i.e., the sink. In multi-hop networks, intermediate nodes
alternate between active and dormant states and the wakeup time of the next hop cannot be known a priori because
of uncontrollable characteristics of energy harvesting. So, the
schemes dened in DeepSleep are not effective for such
scenarios. In other words, for DeepSleep to work properly,
always-on receivers are needed, which is not the case of multihop networks.
E. EL-MAC (Energy Level based-MAC: MAC Protocol for
Energy Harvesting Users in Cognitive Radio Networks)
Cognitive Radio (CR) is a technology that enables
transceivers to detect temporary-vacant channels and exploit
them in a sophisticated way so as to optimize spectrum
usage, without interfering with the transmission of other
users. Cognitive operation can be performed in under-utilized
licensed bands to discover and opportunistically access to
spectrum holes. Authorized users who have a license for
using the spectrum are called Primary Users (PUs) and those
who employ cognitive radio to nd an access opportunity are
referred to as Secondary Users (SUs). SUs should execute
the cognitive action carefully to avoid interfering with the PU
transmissions.
In [14], Kim et al. propose Energy Level based MAC
(EL-MAC), a MAC protocol for Energy Harvesting SUs in
a Cognitive Radio Sensor Network (CRSN). Communication
is done on a superframe basis. A superframe is split into
three periods, namely, sensing period, contention period, and
transmission period. In the rst period, SUs sense the channel
to discover whether the channel is used by PUs or not. If the
channel is busy, SUs immediately go to sleep so as not to
disturb PUs communications. Otherwise, SUs can transit to
the contention period and after that, the transmission period.
EL-MAC uses CSMA/CA for channel access. The protocol
favors low-energy users over high-energy ones by executing
differentiated access probability and differentiated contention
window. At the start of a superframe, each SU calculates its
access probability which is inversely proportional to the current residual energy. Based on the calculated values, some SUs
become non-contending users and go to sleep to save energy.
EL-MAC also implements a differentiated contention window
scheme to further enhance the chance of low-energy users for
accessing the channel. This scheme assigns shorter contention
windows to low-energy devices in order to prioritize them over
nodes whose energy levels are greater.
Advantages: First, EL-MAC alleviates contention level by
forcing some users to leave the contention and go to sleep.
The lower the number of contending users becomes, the lower
the collision probability will be. Second, EL-MAC helps the
nodes to utilize their residual energy efciently. It gives the
opportunity of transmission to low-energy users so that they
can transmit before their energy falls below the threshold.

Meanwhile, some of the nodes with higher energy levels go

to sleep in order not to waste their energy in contending with
prioritized low-energy users.
Disadvantages: Using the above-mentioned mechanisms,
some high-energy users stop contending, go to sleep and
not only save energy but also may harvest additional energy.
Accordingly, these devices will remain high-energy for successive superframes and they will lose their chances for data
transmission several times. This raises a fairness issue for them
since they may experience buffer overows and long delays
due to not having the transmission opportunity. Moreover,
similar to what we mentioned for DeepSleep, this approach
is appropriate for single-hop networks where the sink is just
one hop away from the nodes and is always ready to receive
the packets, so, the nodes can transmit as soon as they acquire
the channel. In multi-hop situations, the intermediate nodes
alternate between asleep and awake states; thus, even the
contention winners are not sure whether they can transmit or
not (i.e., whether the receiver is active or not).
F. LEB-MAC (Load and Energy Balancing MAC Protocol for
Energy Harvesting Powered WSNs)
In LEB-MAC [15], which is another receiver-initiated MAC
protocol for EH-WSNs, the beacons transmitted by the receiver nodes carry the information about the next wake-up
schedules. This lets the willing senders extend their sleep
intervals and wake up slightly prior to the wake-up time
of their intended receiver. However, when a sender node is
planning to communicate with a receiver for the rst time, it
does not have any information about the receiver's schedule;
so, the sender node has to wait sufciently long in order not
to miss the receiver's beacon. The maximum waiting time of
the sender (SLmax ) is application-dependent.
The duty-cycle of a receiver node is adjusted according to its
energy level. Therefore, a node which faces energy deciency
sleeps longer so that it can harvest enough energy before
the next wake-up time. The authors exploit the concept of
a fuzzy logic to set the sleep intervals of the nodes based
on energy levels. Nodes with higher residual energy wake
up more frequently, so, a sender node having more than one
option for packet forwarding can arbitrarily choose one of the
active potential receivers for packet relaying. This is somewhat
similar to the opportunistic forwarding scheme of ODMAC as
the nodes do not have to wait for a specic beacon.
To handle data collisions, the authors dene two collision
situations: 1) None of the colliding senders have previously
communicated with the receiver. 2) Some senders have already
communicated with the receiver in previous cycles. Each
receiver maintains a sender list including those who have
previously transmitted data to it. In the second situation of
data collision, the receiver sends a dedicated beacon to the
node that is in the sender list. If more than one familiar sender
is involved in the data collision, the receiver schedules the
transmissions based on the information obtained from previous
data frames (e.g., priority levels). In the rst situation (all of
the senders are non-familiar to the receiver), collisions are

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TABLE II
C OMPARISON OF MAC P ROTOCOLS FOR E NVIRONMENTALLY-P OWERED WSN S
Protocol
Probabilistic Polling for Single-hop WSNs [9]
ODMAC [10]
EH-MAC [12]
DeepSleep [13]
EL-MAC [14]
LEB-MAC [15]

Throughput
High
Moderate
High
High
High
Moderate

resolved by the random backoff selection. Each sender chooses

a random backoff time, initiates a timer, and goes to sleep until
the timer expires.
Advantages: Since the nodes know the wake-up time of
their receivers, the energy is consumed in an intelligent
way. As a result of this, the energy depletion process gets
slower. As each sender node may be a receiver for another
sender, this energy saving results in more frequent beacon
transmissions from each node because according to the dutycycling approach of LEB-MAC, the wake-up schedules are
decided based on current energy levels. Hence, more routes are
created from a node to the sink which mitigates the contention,
balances the network load among nodes, and leads to higher
packet delivery ratios and lower end-to-end delays.
Disadvantages: The senders who try to communicate for
the rst time experience unfairness. The collision resolution
mechanism described above leaves a limited chance for rsttime communicating nodes, thus, they have to wait a long time
before all the previously-communicated senders nish their
transmissions. Considering the fact that rst-time communicating nodes do not have any information regarding wakeup times and have to wait as long as possible to receive
their rst beacon, the collision resolution of LEB-MAC adds
to their tolerated delay. This issue becomes more serious
in dynamic networks where frequent addition of new nodes
is probable. Lacking energy harvesting prediction is another
shortcoming of LEB-MAC. As noted earlier for ODMAC,
utilizing a prediction method will be helpful for adjusting the
duty-cycle more wisely.
V. C ONCLUSION
Energy harvesting is a promising technology for WSNs as it
mitigates the energy limitation in sensor networks. However,
this new technology needs further developments to reach the
level where it can be widely used in WSNs. Bearing in mind
the important role of the MAC layer in any shared-medium
network, in this paper, we reviewed the recent trend in the design of MAC protocols for Energy Harvesting Wireless Sensor
Networks (EH-WSNs), with the hope of providing a guideline
for interested researchers. We introduced the attributes that a
MAC protocol of EH-WSN should support and summarized
the attempts made in the design of MAC protocols for energy
harvesting sensor networks with a comprehensive discussion
on their strengths and weaknesses. Table II gives an insight
on whether the protocols satisfy the requirements of a suitable
EH-WSN MAC protocol or not.

Latency
Moderate
Low
High
Moderate
Moderate
Low

Scalability
High
Low
High
High
Moderate
Low

Fairness
High
Moderate
High
High
Low
Moderate

Single-hop/Multi-hop
Single-hop
Multi-hop
Multi-hop
Single-hop
Single-hop
Multi-hop

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