Energy-efficient hybrid MAC protocol for railway monitoring sensor network

In the present work, a new protocol is proposed i.e. application-specific hybrid medium access control (ASHMAC) to efficiently handle data traffic generation in the railway track condition monitoring system. ASHMAC protocol is an improved version of the bit-map-assisted (BMA) medium access control (MAC) protocol by which it can efficiently handle continuous monitoring data traffic as well. Simulation and mathematical models have been developed and proposed for ASHMAC protocol. Its performance is compared with the other MAC protocols. The results reveal that the proposed protocol consumes 25–50% less energy w.r.t. time division multiple access (TDMA), energy-efficient TDMA, and BMA at low to medium data traffic conditions. For high data traffic conditions, the energy consumption of the proposed ASHMAC protocol is approximately equal to the other protocols. The transmission latency of ASHMAC is approximately 50% less than energy-efficient BMA. Both analytical and simulation results show the overall superiority of the proposed protocol.