Pandeeswaran Chelliah¹, Pappa Natarajan¹, and Jayesh Sundar Gopinath², ¹Anna University, India and ²St.Joseph's College of Engineering, India

In this paper a H-MAC protocol (Hybrid Medium Access Control protocol) has been proposed, which is an energy efficient and low latency MAC protocol which uses node ID method to assign priority for certain wireless sensor nodes that are assumed to be present in critical loops for an industrial process control domain. H-MAC overcomes some of the limitations in the existing approaches. In the case of industrial automation scenario, certain sensor loops are found to be time critical, where data’s have to be transferred without any further delay, as failure in immediate transmission leads to catastrophic results for humans as well as machinery in industrial domain. The proposed H-MAC protocol is simulated in NS2 environment, from the result it is observed that the proposed protocol provides better performance compared to the conventional MAC protocols mentioned in the recent literature for the conceded problem. A MAC protocol which provides both energy saving mechanism and that can handle emergency situation is the most desired for any industry. In any industry time and mission critical scenarios requires strict timeliness and reliability along with the energy efficiency. However there are dynamic and harsh environmental conditions for which the MAC protocol must survive and do transmission accordingly. The dynamic changes in topology must also be adapted so that the nodes are in constant link to the destination. Most of the existing MAC protocols have been identified as they face a number of limitations for industrial application domain.

MAC protocol, Industrial wireless sensor networks (IWSN), Time critical applications and Energy efficiency.