One of the traditional and major concerns in wireless sensor networks (WSNs) is energy efficiency and its related life-time of battery whereas maximizing system throughput and employing bandwidth efficiently is a second priority to be considered. In recent years, many applications such as video monitoring in WSN are requiring high data rates to transmit long data packets. Therefore, many researchers have concentrated on developing new schemes that can utilize multi-channels to improve system throughput by taking advantage of the parallelism. In this case, channel assignment is critical and dynamic channel assignment has been one of the major schemes to handle multiple channels in ad-hoc networks. In particular, the Split Phase Approach and frequency hopping method are the two ma...[ Read more ]

One of the traditional and major concerns in wireless sensor networks (WSNs) is energy efficiency and its related life-time of battery whereas maximizing system throughput and employing bandwidth efficiently is a second priority to be considered. In recent years, many applications such as video monitoring in WSN are requiring high data rates to transmit long data packets. Therefore, many researchers have concentrated on developing new schemes that can utilize multi-channels to improve system throughput by taking advantage of the parallelism. In this case, channel assignment is critical and dynamic channel assignment has been one of the major schemes to handle multiple channels in ad-hoc networks. In particular, the Split Phase Approach and frequency hopping method are the two major schemes among the dynamic channel assignment methods that are used in WSNs. Among these, however, the Split Phase Approach can be considered as the most promising and practical one because it can use a single radio per device and there is no switching penalty. In this thesis, we consider the use of the Split Phase Approach in the MAC protocol. By proposing a system model for such an approach, we shall find the highest throughput points and the optimal values of control and the data phase length in diverse scenarios with different parameters. We shall thoroughly investigate the common Split Phase Approach and produce our specific system model with an analysis of each parameter. Moreover, we shall simulate our system model in different standards such as 802.11a, 11b, 11g, 11h and 802.15.4 to compare performance and evaluate system throughput in each standard. Through simulations, we shall obtain the optimal value of control and data phase lengths and analyze how the improved throughput is obtained as well as find the relationship between the system throughput and the specific parameters.