System architecture directions for networked sensors
ASPLOS IX Proceedings of the ninth international conference on Architectural support for programming languages and operating systems
Versatile low power media access for wireless sensor networks
SenSys '04 Proceedings of the 2nd international conference on Embedded networked sensor systems
X-MAC: a short preamble MAC protocol for duty-cycled wireless sensor networks
Proceedings of the 4th international conference on Embedded networked sensor systems
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Over the years many different MAC protocols have been developed for sensor networks, each optimised for a different set of application requirements. Since these MAC protocols are not compatible with each other, there is generally no interoperability between sensor networks. This is a severe problem when connectivity between sensor networks is required. In this paper, we demonstrate the feasibility of using virtual gateways, sensor nodes running multiple MAC protocols simultaneously on top of a single radio interface, to enable connectivity between sensor networks. To this end we have developed MultiMAC, a network stack for TinyOS capable of running multiple MAC protocols simultaneously. We show that the architecture of the MultiMAC stack is flexible and extensible enough to support a wide variety of MAC protocols and that the overhead of this network stack is minimal. We also discuss the results of our initial experiments with a testbed on the impact of using virtual gateways.