{"status":"ok","message-type":"work","message-version":"1.0.0","message":{"indexed":{"date-parts":[[2025,10,12]],"date-time":"2025-10-12T03:39:51Z","timestamp":1760240391916,"version":"build-2065373602"},"reference-count":59,"publisher":"MDPI AG","issue":"10","license":[{"start":{"date-parts":[[2019,5,26]],"date-time":"2019-05-26T00:00:00Z","timestamp":1558828800000},"content-version":"vor","delay-in-days":0,"URL":"https:\/\/creativecommons.org\/licenses\/by\/4.0\/"}],"content-domain":{"domain":[],"crossmark-restriction":false},"short-container-title":["Sensors"],"abstract":"<jats:p>As Wireless Sensor Networks (WSNs) grow in popularity, researchers are now focusing more on some challenging issues that significantly degrade overall performance, such as energy hole mitigation, link asymmetry minimization, etc. Link asymmetry is a problem that arises when the coverage distance between two adjacent nodes varies. It creates an obstacle to overcome when designing an efficient Medium Access Control (MAC) protocol for WSNs with low duty-cycling. This phenomenon poses an especially difficult challenge for receiver-initiated asynchronous MAC protocols, which are popular due to their relatively higher energy efficiency. Exploiting the benefits of cooperative communication has emerged as one of the viable solutions to overcome this limitation. Cooperative communication in WSNs has received a lot of attention in recent years. Many researchers have worked to create a MAC layer supporting cooperative communication. However, the association of cooperative communication with an asymmetric link is not studied in the literature. In this research work, COASYM-MAC, a cooperative asynchronous MAC protocol for WSNs, is proposed based on a receiver-initiated MAC protocol that uses the fact that nodes have alternate paths between them to reduce link asymmetry. A key feature of the proposed protocol is that the optimal helper node is selected automatically in case of link asymmetry. Simulations exhibited that COASYM-MAC performs significantly better than a state-of-the-art MAC protocol for WSNs that handles asymmetric links, ASYM-MAC.<\/jats:p>","DOI":"10.3390\/s19102402","type":"journal-article","created":{"date-parts":[[2019,5,26]],"date-time":"2019-05-26T23:07:27Z","timestamp":1558912047000},"page":"2402","update-policy":"https:\/\/doi.org\/10.3390\/mdpi_crossmark_policy","source":"Crossref","is-referenced-by-count":12,"title":["Minimizing the Adverse Effects of Asymmetric Links: A Novel Cooperative Asynchronous MAC Protocol for Wireless Sensor Networks"],"prefix":"10.3390","volume":"19","author":[{"given":"Md. Mahedee","family":"Hasan","sequence":"first","affiliation":[{"name":"IICT, Bangladesh University of Engineering &amp; Technology, Dhaka 1000, Bangladesh"}],"role":[{"role":"author","vocabulary":"crossref"}]},{"ORCID":"https:\/\/orcid.org\/0000-0001-7071-8358","authenticated-orcid":false,"given":"Amit","family":"Karmaker","sequence":"additional","affiliation":[{"name":"IICT, Bangladesh University of Engineering &amp; Technology, Dhaka 1000, Bangladesh"}],"role":[{"role":"author","vocabulary":"crossref"}]},{"ORCID":"https:\/\/orcid.org\/0000-0001-7041-2391","authenticated-orcid":false,"given":"Mohammad Shah","family":"Alam","sequence":"additional","affiliation":[{"name":"IICT, Bangladesh University of Engineering &amp; Technology, Dhaka 1000, Bangladesh"},{"name":"Department of Computer Science, Tennessee Technological University, Cookeville, TN 38505, USA"}],"role":[{"role":"author","vocabulary":"crossref"}]},{"given":"Andrew","family":"Craig","sequence":"additional","affiliation":[{"name":"Department of Computer Science, Tennessee Technological University, Cookeville, TN 38505, USA"}],"role":[{"role":"author","vocabulary":"crossref"}]}],"member":"1968","published-online":{"date-parts":[[2019,5,26]]},"reference":[{"doi-asserted-by":"crossref","unstructured":"Rabby, M.K.M., Alam, M.S., and Shawkat, M. (2019). A priority based energy harvesting scheme for charging embedded sensor nodes in wireless body area networks. PLoS ONE, 14.","key":"ref_1","DOI":"10.1371\/journal.pone.0214716"},{"key":"ref_2","doi-asserted-by":"crossref","first-page":"2292","DOI":"10.1016\/j.comnet.2008.04.002","article-title":"Wireless sensor network survey","volume":"52","author":"Yick","year":"2008","journal-title":"Comput. Netw."},{"key":"ref_3","doi-asserted-by":"crossref","first-page":"393","DOI":"10.1016\/S1389-1286(01)00302-4","article-title":"Wireless sensor networks: A survey","volume":"38","author":"Akyildiz","year":"2002","journal-title":"Comput. Netw."},{"key":"ref_4","doi-asserted-by":"crossref","first-page":"6246","DOI":"10.3390\/ijerph110606246","article-title":"The deployment of carbon monoxide wireless sensor network (CO-WSN) for ambient air monitoring","volume":"11","author":"Chaiwatpongsakorn","year":"2014","journal-title":"Int. J. Environ. Res. Public Health"},{"doi-asserted-by":"crossref","unstructured":"Mitterer, T., Gietler, H., Faller, L.M., and Zangl, H. (2018). Artificial Landmarks for Autonomous Vehicles Based on Magnetic Sensors. Proceedings, 2.","key":"ref_5","DOI":"10.3390\/proceedings2130856"},{"doi-asserted-by":"crossref","unstructured":"Kim, M., Park, S., and Lee, W. (2019). Energy and Distance-Aware Hopping Sensor Relocation for Wireless Sensor Networks. Sensors, 19.","key":"ref_6","DOI":"10.3390\/s19071567"},{"doi-asserted-by":"crossref","unstructured":"Pau, G., and Salerno, V.M. (2019). Wireless Sensor Networks for Smart Homes: A Fuzzy-Based Solution for an Energy-Effective Duty Cycle. Electronics, 8.","key":"ref_7","DOI":"10.3390\/electronics8020131"},{"unstructured":"Khyam, M., Li, X., and Pesch, D. (2019). Sensor Fusion and State Estimation of IoT Enabled Wind Energy Conversion System. Sensors, 19.","key":"ref_8"},{"key":"ref_9","doi-asserted-by":"crossref","first-page":"537","DOI":"10.1016\/j.adhoc.2008.06.003","article-title":"Energy conservation in wireless sensor networks: A survey","volume":"7","author":"Anastasi","year":"2009","journal-title":"Ad Hoc Netw."},{"key":"ref_10","doi-asserted-by":"crossref","first-page":"26971","DOI":"10.1109\/ACCESS.2018.2833632","article-title":"Coverage and Connectivity in WSNs: A Survey, Research Issues and Challenges","volume":"6","author":"Tripathi","year":"2018","journal-title":"IEEE Access"},{"key":"ref_11","doi-asserted-by":"crossref","first-page":"8273","DOI":"10.1109\/ACCESS.2018.2809501","article-title":"QTSAC: An energy-efficient MAC protocol for delay minimization in wireless sensor networks","volume":"6","author":"Liu","year":"2018","journal-title":"IEEE Access"},{"key":"ref_12","doi-asserted-by":"crossref","first-page":"1872","DOI":"10.1109\/ACCESS.2017.2666200","article-title":"A survey on software-defined wireless sensor networks: Challenges and design requirements","volume":"5","author":"Kobo","year":"2017","journal-title":"IEEE Access"},{"doi-asserted-by":"crossref","unstructured":"Sang, L., Arora, A., and Zhang, H. (2007, January 9\u201314). On exploiting asymmetric wireless links via one-way estimation. Proceedings of the 8th ACM International Symposium on Mobile Ad Hoc Networking and Computing, Montreal, QC, Canada.","key":"ref_13","DOI":"10.1145\/1288107.1288110"},{"key":"ref_14","doi-asserted-by":"crossref","first-page":"424","DOI":"10.1016\/j.adhoc.2007.03.004","article-title":"A MAC layer protocol for wireless networks with asymmetric links","volume":"6","author":"Wang","year":"2008","journal-title":"Ad Hoc Netw."},{"doi-asserted-by":"crossref","unstructured":"Mukherjee, M., Shu, L., Hu, L., and Deng, D.J. (2017). Impacts of Radio Irregularity on Duty-Cycled Industrial Wireless Sensor Networks. Lecture Notes of the Institute for Computer Sciences, Social Informatics and Telecommunications Engineering, Springer International Publishing.","key":"ref_15","DOI":"10.1007\/978-3-319-52569-3_3"},{"unstructured":"Ganesan, D., Krishnamachari, B., Woo, A., Culler, D., Estrin, D., and Wicker, S. (2002). Complex Behavior at Scale: An Experimental Study of Low-Power Wireless Sensor Networks, CiteSeerX.","key":"ref_16"},{"key":"ref_17","doi-asserted-by":"crossref","first-page":"1172","DOI":"10.1109\/TNET.2008.2008001","article-title":"On Accurate and Asymmetry-Aware Measurement of Link Quality in Wireless Mesh Networks","volume":"17","author":"Kim","year":"2009","journal-title":"IEEE\/ACM Trans. Netw."},{"key":"ref_18","doi-asserted-by":"crossref","first-page":"34","DOI":"10.1145\/2240116.2240123","article-title":"Radio link quality estimation in wireless sensor networks: A survey","volume":"8","author":"Baccour","year":"2012","journal-title":"ACM Trans. Sens. Netw."},{"unstructured":"Ding, X., Sun, G., Yang, G., and Shang, X. (2016). Link investigation of IEEE 802.15. 4 wireless sensor networks in forests. Sensors, 16.","key":"ref_19"},{"unstructured":"Bildea, A. (2013). Link Quality in Wireless Sensor Networks. [Ph.D. Thesis, Universit\u00e9 de Grenoble].","key":"ref_20"},{"doi-asserted-by":"crossref","unstructured":"Woehrle, M., Bor, M., and Langendoen, K. (2012, January 11\u201314). 868 MHz: A noiseless environment, but no free lunch for protocol design. Proceedings of the 2012 Ninth International Conference on Networked Sensing (INSS), Antwerp, Belgium.","key":"ref_21","DOI":"10.1109\/INSS.2012.6240533"},{"key":"ref_22","doi-asserted-by":"crossref","first-page":"16","DOI":"10.1145\/1689239.1689246","article-title":"An empirical study of low-power wireless","volume":"6","author":"Srinivasan","year":"2010","journal-title":"ACM Trans. Sens. Netw."},{"key":"ref_23","doi-asserted-by":"crossref","first-page":"6674","DOI":"10.3390\/s8106674","article-title":"Impact of link unreliability and asymmetry on the quality of connectivity in large-scale sensor networks","volume":"8","author":"Li","year":"2008","journal-title":"Sensors"},{"doi-asserted-by":"crossref","unstructured":"Misra, P., Ahmed, N., Ostry, D., and Jha, S. (2011, January 2\u20135). Characterization of asymmetry in low-power wireless links: An empirical study. Proceedings of the International Conference on Distributed Computing and Networking, Bangalore, India.","key":"ref_24","DOI":"10.1007\/978-3-642-17679-1_30"},{"unstructured":"Ye, W., Heidemann, J., and Estrin, D. (2002, January 23\u201327). An energy-efficient MAC protocol for wireless sensor networks. Proceedings of the Twenty-First Annual Joint Conference of the IEEE Computer and Communications Societies, New York, NY, USA.","key":"ref_25"},{"doi-asserted-by":"crossref","unstructured":"Van Dam, T., and Langendoen, K. (2003, January 5\u20137). An adaptive energy-efficient MAC protocol for wireless sensor networks. Proceedings of the First International Conference on Embedded Networked Sensor Systems, Los Angeles, CA, USA.","key":"ref_26","DOI":"10.1145\/958511.958512"},{"doi-asserted-by":"crossref","unstructured":"Polastre, J., Hill, J., and Culler, D. (2004, January 3\u20135). Versatile low power media access for wireless sensor networks. Proceedings of the 2nd International Conference on Embedded Networked Sensor Systems, Baltimore, MD, USA.","key":"ref_27","DOI":"10.1145\/1031495.1031508"},{"doi-asserted-by":"crossref","unstructured":"Sun, Y., Gurewitz, O., and Johnson, D.B. (2008, January 4\u20137). RI-MAC. Proceedings of the 6th ACM Conference on Embedded Network Sensor Systems, Raleigh, NC, USA.","key":"ref_28","DOI":"10.1145\/1460412.1460414"},{"key":"ref_29","doi-asserted-by":"crossref","first-page":"514169","DOI":"10.1155\/2014\/514169","article-title":"ERI-MAC: An Energy-Harvested Receiver-Initiated MAC Protocol for Wireless Sensor Networks","volume":"10","author":"Nguyen","year":"2014","journal-title":"Int. J. Distrib. Sens. Netw."},{"key":"ref_30","doi-asserted-by":"crossref","first-page":"809","DOI":"10.1109\/LCOMM.2014.032014.132679","article-title":"Asym-MAC: A MAC Protocol for Low-Power Duty-Cycled Wireless Sensor Networks with Asymmetric Links","volume":"18","author":"Won","year":"2014","journal-title":"IEEE Commun. Lett."},{"doi-asserted-by":"crossref","unstructured":"Hasan, M.M., Karmaker, A., Moni, S.S., and Alam, M.S. (2016, January 20\u201322). COASYM-MAC: A cooperative Asymmetric MAC protocol for Wireless Sensor Network. Proceedings of the 9th International Conference on Electrical and Computer Engineering (ICECE), Dhaka, Bangladesh.","key":"ref_31","DOI":"10.1109\/ICECE.2016.7853981"},{"unstructured":"Buettner, M., Yee, G.V., Anderson, E., and Han, R. (November, January 31). X-MAC. Proceedings of the 4th International Conference on Embedded Networked Sensor Systems, Boulder, CO, USA.","key":"ref_32"},{"key":"ref_33","doi-asserted-by":"crossref","first-page":"860","DOI":"10.1109\/JSEN.2017.2771397","article-title":"ADP-MAC: An Adaptive and Dynamic Polling-Based MAC Protocol for Wireless Sensor Networks","volume":"18","author":"Siddiqui","year":"2018","journal-title":"IEEE Sens. J."},{"doi-asserted-by":"crossref","unstructured":"Tang, L., Sun, Y., Gurewitz, O., and Johnson, D.B. (2011, January 10\u201315). PW-MAC: An energy-efficient predictive-wakeup MAC protocol for wireless sensor networks. Proceedings of the 2011 IEEE INFOCOM, Shanghai, China.","key":"ref_34","DOI":"10.1109\/INFCOM.2011.5934913"},{"key":"ref_35","doi-asserted-by":"crossref","first-page":"30","DOI":"10.1145\/2240116.2240119","article-title":"A-MAC: A versatile and efficient receiver-initiated link layer for low-power wireless","volume":"8","author":"Dutta","year":"2012","journal-title":"ACM Trans. Sens. Netw."},{"unstructured":"Lee, J., and Kim, S. (2018). EnRI-MAC: An enhanced receiver-initiated MAC protocol for various traffic types in wireless sensor networks. Wirel. Netw., 1\u201310.","key":"ref_36"},{"key":"ref_37","doi-asserted-by":"crossref","first-page":"46","DOI":"10.4018\/jertcs.2011100104","article-title":"Asymmetric Geographic Forwarding","volume":"2","author":"Mitra","year":"2011","journal-title":"Int. J. Embed. Real-Time Commun. Syst."},{"doi-asserted-by":"crossref","unstructured":"Romdhani, B., Barthel, D., and Valois, F. (2012). Exploiting Asymmetric Links in a Convergecast Routing Protocol for Wireless Sensor Networks. Ad-hoc, Mobile, and Wireless Networks, Springer.","key":"ref_38","DOI":"10.1007\/978-3-642-31638-8_28"},{"unstructured":"Pengwon, K., Komolmis, T., and Champrasert, P. (July, January 28). Solving asymmetric link problems in WSNs using site Link Quality Estimators and dual-tree topology. Proceedings of the 13th International Conference on Electrical Engineering\/Electronics, Computer, Telecommunications and Information Technology (ECTI-CON), Chiang Mai, Thailand.","key":"ref_39"},{"key":"ref_40","first-page":"501","article-title":"Energy Efficient Reverse Path Routing Protocol for Asymmetric Links in Wireless Sensor Networks","volume":"7","author":"Nath","year":"2017","journal-title":"Asian J. Res. Soc. Sci. Hum."},{"unstructured":"Vyas, L., Gupta, C.P., and Arquam, M. (2016). DHAC Based Routing in Wireless Sensor Network with Asymmetric Links. Proceedings of the International Conference on Signal, Networks, Computing, and Systems, Springer.","key":"ref_41"},{"key":"ref_42","doi-asserted-by":"crossref","first-page":"51","DOI":"10.1016\/j.jnca.2017.01.009","article-title":"AREP: An asymmetric link-based reverse routing protocol for underwater acoustic sensor networks","volume":"92","author":"Han","year":"2017","journal-title":"J. Netw. Comput. Appl."},{"key":"ref_43","doi-asserted-by":"crossref","first-page":"1045","DOI":"10.1109\/TVT.2011.2106172","article-title":"A Cross-Layer Approach Handling Link Asymmetry for Wireless Mesh Access Networks","volume":"60","author":"Huang","year":"2011","journal-title":"IEEE Trans. Veh. Technol."},{"key":"ref_44","doi-asserted-by":"crossref","first-page":"4402","DOI":"10.1109\/JSEN.2013.2269796","article-title":"A Link-State Based Adaptive Feedback Routing for Underwater Acoustic Sensor Networks","volume":"13","author":"Zhang","year":"2013","journal-title":"IEEE Sens. J."},{"key":"ref_45","doi-asserted-by":"crossref","first-page":"9043","DOI":"10.1109\/ACCESS.2016.2638441","article-title":"Geographic Routing in Duty-Cycled Industrial Wireless Sensor Networks With Radio Irregularity","volume":"4","author":"Shu","year":"2016","journal-title":"IEEE Access"},{"doi-asserted-by":"crossref","unstructured":"Nacef, A.B., Senouci, S.M., Ghamri-Doudane, Y., and Beylot, A.L. (2011, January 5\u20139). A Cooperative Low Power Mac Protocol for Wireless Sensor Networks. Proceedings of the IEEE International Conference on Communications (ICC), Kyoto, Japan.","key":"ref_46","DOI":"10.1109\/icc.2011.5962416"},{"unstructured":"Nguyen, D.L., Tran, L.Q.V., Berder, O., and Sentieys, O. (2013, January 9\u201313). A low-latency and energy-efficient MAC protocol for cooperative wireless sensor networks. Proceedings of the 2013 IEEE Global Communications Conference (GLOBECOM), Atlanta, GA, USA.","key":"ref_47"},{"doi-asserted-by":"crossref","unstructured":"Khan, R.A.M., and Karl, H. (2011). Multihop Performance of Cooperative Preamble Sampling MAC(CPS-MAC) in Wireless Sensor Networks. Ad-Hoc, Mobile, and Wireless Networks, Springer.","key":"ref_48","DOI":"10.1007\/978-3-642-22450-8_11"},{"doi-asserted-by":"crossref","unstructured":"Tran, L.Q.V., Berder, O., and Sentieys, O. (2014, January 6\u20139). RIC-MAC: A MAC protocol for low-power cooperative wireless sensor networks. Proceedings of the 2014 IEEE Wireless Communications and Networking Conference (WCNC), Istanbul, Turkey.","key":"ref_49","DOI":"10.1109\/WCNC.2014.6952567"},{"doi-asserted-by":"crossref","unstructured":"Guntupalli, L., Lin, J., Weitnauer, M.A., and Li, F.Y. (2014, January 10\u201314). ACT-MAC: An asynchronous cooperative transmission MAC protocol for WSNs. Proceedings of the 2014 IEEE International Conference on Communications Workshops (ICC), Sydney, Australia.","key":"ref_50","DOI":"10.1109\/ICCW.2014.6881306"},{"key":"ref_51","doi-asserted-by":"crossref","first-page":"56","DOI":"10.1109\/TNET.2018.2880797","article-title":"A Wake-Up Radio-Based MAC Protocol for Autonomous Wireless Sensor Networks","volume":"27","author":"Pegatoquet","year":"2019","journal-title":"IEEE\/ACM Trans. Netw."},{"doi-asserted-by":"crossref","unstructured":"Zhou, F., Chen, Z., Guo, S., and Li, J. (2015, January 6\u201310). Maximizing Lifetime of Data-Gathering Trees with Different Aggregation Modes in WSNs. Proceedings of the 2015 IEEE Global Communications Conference (GLOBECOM), San Diego, CA, USA.","key":"ref_52","DOI":"10.1109\/GLOCOM.2015.7417120"},{"key":"ref_53","doi-asserted-by":"crossref","first-page":"1498","DOI":"10.1109\/JSEN.2012.2227704","article-title":"Load-Balanced Clustering Algorithm With Distributed Self-Organization for Wireless Sensor Networks","volume":"13","author":"Liao","year":"2013","journal-title":"IEEE Sens. J."},{"key":"ref_54","first-page":"140","article-title":"Scheduling Beacon Transmission to Improve Delay for Receiver-initiated-MAC Based Wireless Sensor Networks","volume":"26","author":"Fujimoto","year":"2018","journal-title":"J. Inf. Process."},{"doi-asserted-by":"crossref","unstructured":"Serror, M., Vaaben, S., Wehrle, K., and Gross, J. (2018, January 12\u201315). Practical Evaluation of Cooperative Communication for Ultra-Reliability and Low-Latency. Proceedings of the 2018 IEEE 19th International Symposium on \u201cA World of Wireless, Mobile and Multimedia Networks\u201d (WoWMoM), Chania, Greece.","key":"ref_55","DOI":"10.1109\/WoWMoM.2018.8449807"},{"key":"ref_56","doi-asserted-by":"crossref","first-page":"651","DOI":"10.1007\/s11036-013-0456-9","article-title":"Natural disaster monitoring with wireless sensor networks: A case study of data-intensive applications upon low-cost scalable systems","volume":"18","author":"Chen","year":"2013","journal-title":"Mob. Netw. Appl."},{"doi-asserted-by":"crossref","unstructured":"Benkhelifa, I., Nouali-Taboudjemat, N., and Moussaoui, S. (2014, January 13\u201316). Disaster management projects using wireless sensor networks: An overview. Proceedings of the 2014 28th International Conference on Advanced Information Networking and Applications Workshops, Victoria, BC, Canada.","key":"ref_57","DOI":"10.1109\/WAINA.2014.99"},{"unstructured":"Werner-Allen, G., Johnson, J., Ruiz, M., Lees, J., and Welsh, M. (2005, January 2). Monitoring volcanic eruptions with a wireless sensor network. Proceedings of the 2005 Second European Workshop on Wireless Sensor Networks, Istanbul, Turkey.","key":"ref_58"},{"unstructured":"Tian, L., Khorov, E., Latr\u00e9, S., and Famaey, J. (2017). Real-time station grouping under dynamic traffic for IEEE 802.11 ah. Sensors, 17.","key":"ref_59"}],"container-title":["Sensors"],"original-title":[],"language":"en","link":[{"URL":"https:\/\/www.mdpi.com\/1424-8220\/19\/10\/2402\/pdf","content-type":"unspecified","content-version":"vor","intended-application":"similarity-checking"}],"deposited":{"date-parts":[[2025,10,11]],"date-time":"2025-10-11T12:55:10Z","timestamp":1760187310000},"score":1,"resource":{"primary":{"URL":"https:\/\/www.mdpi.com\/1424-8220\/19\/10\/2402"}},"subtitle":[],"short-title":[],"issued":{"date-parts":[[2019,5,26]]},"references-count":59,"journal-issue":{"issue":"10","published-online":{"date-parts":[[2019,5]]}},"alternative-id":["s19102402"],"URL":"https:\/\/doi.org\/10.3390\/s19102402","relation":{},"ISSN":["1424-8220"],"issn-type":[{"type":"electronic","value":"1424-8220"}],"subject":[],"published":{"date-parts":[[2019,5,26]]}}}