Design and simulation of a new relay mechanism for wireless sensor networks

Recently, thanks to the rapid progress of technology and improvements in telecommunication, the applications of Wireless Sensor Networks (WSNs) have spread rapidly. Although the idea of WSN application was originally intended for military purposes, it is now being developed and implemented in many commercial and non-commercial areas. WSN applications have rapidly increased in areas such as military, health, environment, urban and smart houses. In parallel with the increasing importance of WSNs as a research topic, with investigations on Media Access Control (MAC) protocol among WSN research topics are frequently encountered. Within the scope of MAC protocols, parameters that have critical importance in the WSNs such as how to network organize, energy saving, network lifetime, collision, congestion, data gathering techniques are frequently studied topics. Especially, for complex applications in multi-hopping WSNs, which have numerous sensors, for keeping constantly all nodes in the network very flexible MAC protocols are needed. In this study, a new relay mechanism was designed for the MAC layer in the multi-hop WSNs. With this mechanism, it has been aimed at supporting multiple topologies, provides faster participation to the network, to minimize collision, and ensuring that all nodes keep constantly on the network in multi-hop WSNs. Developed relay mechanism, the findings obtained has examined by simulating according to different network topology and different node numbers in the Riverbed Modeler simulation environment.