A novel distributed algorithm for media access control address assignment in wireless sensor networks

Abstract

This paper presents a novel distributed media access control (MAC) address assignment algorithm, namely virtual grid spatial reusing (VGSR), for wireless sensor networks, which reduces the size of the MAC address efficiently on the basis of both the spatial reuse of MAC address and the mapping of geographical position. By adjusting the communication range of sensor nodes, VGSR algorithm can minimize the size of MAC address and meanwhile guarantee the connectivity of the sensor network. Theoretical analysis and experimental results show that VGSR algorithm is not only of low energy cost, but also scales well with the network size, with its performance superior to that of other existing algorithms.