{"status":"ok","message-type":"work","message-version":"1.0.0","message":{"indexed":{"date-parts":[[2025,10,14]],"date-time":"2025-10-14T00:31:15Z","timestamp":1760401875552,"version":"build-2065373602"},"reference-count":34,"publisher":"MDPI AG","issue":"1","license":[{"start":{"date-parts":[[2020,1,1]],"date-time":"2020-01-01T00:00:00Z","timestamp":1577836800000},"content-version":"vor","delay-in-days":0,"URL":"https:\/\/creativecommons.org\/licenses\/by\/4.0\/"}],"funder":[{"DOI":"10.13039\/501100004901","name":"Funda\u00e7\u00e3o de Amparo \u00e0 Pesquisa do Estado de Minas Gerais","doi-asserted-by":"publisher","award":["APQ-03095-16"],"award-info":[{"award-number":["APQ-03095-16"]}],"id":[{"id":"10.13039\/501100004901","id-type":"DOI","asserted-by":"publisher"}]}],"content-domain":{"domain":[],"crossmark-restriction":false},"short-container-title":["Sensors"],"abstract":"<jats:p>Wireless sensor networks employ duty-cycles to save energy, with the cost of enlargement of end-to-end latency. Cross-layer protocols that use anycast medium access control achieve latency reduction in asynchronous duty-cycled wireless sensor networks (WSNs). A series of strobed preambles is sent in order to achieve rendezvous with the next relay, selected from a forwarding candidate set (FCS). This paper proposes PAX-MAC: Pramble Ahead Cross-layer Medium Access Control. It is a novel anycast protocol for low latency packet propagation in duty-cycled WSNs. In PAX-MAC, preambles propagate ahead of data packet, prospecting the route towards sink node, while the message is sent some hops later. Simultaneous propagation of preambles and data packets provides latency reduction. The cardinality of FCS determines the average preamble propagation speed, which is lower bounded by data packet propagation speed. Differently from other approaches, our protocol takes the data packet size into account in order to maintain an optimal distance between preamble and data to minimize latency. For determining this distance, a detailed mathematical model is introduced. The performance of several state-of-the-art asynchronous protocols was appraised and compared with PAX-MAC. Our protocol outperforms in latency all other protocols for the simulated scenarios. Its energy expenditure was compatible with the best result among the other protocols. In the worst case, PAX-MAC spent     6 %     more energy than the best one for a gain of     20 %     in latency.<\/jats:p>","DOI":"10.3390\/s20010250","type":"journal-article","created":{"date-parts":[[2020,1,3]],"date-time":"2020-01-03T04:43:03Z","timestamp":1578026583000},"page":"250","update-policy":"https:\/\/doi.org\/10.3390\/mdpi_crossmark_policy","source":"Crossref","is-referenced-by-count":6,"title":["PAX-MAC: A Low Latency Anycast Protocol with Advanced Preamble"],"prefix":"10.3390","volume":"20","author":[{"given":"Tales","family":"Heimfarth","sequence":"first","affiliation":[{"name":"Department of Computer Science, Universidade Federal de Lavras, 37200-900 Lavras, Brazil"}],"role":[{"role":"author","vocabulary":"crossref"}]},{"given":"Jo\u00e3o Carlos","family":"Giacomin","sequence":"additional","affiliation":[{"name":"Department of Computer Science, Universidade Federal de Lavras, 37200-900 Lavras, Brazil"}],"role":[{"role":"author","vocabulary":"crossref"}]},{"ORCID":"https:\/\/orcid.org\/0000-0003-4655-8889","authenticated-orcid":false,"given":"Edison Pignaton","family":"de Freitas","sequence":"additional","affiliation":[{"name":"Institute of Informatics, Universidade Federal do Rio Grande do Sul, 90040-060 Porto Alegre, Brazil"}],"role":[{"role":"author","vocabulary":"crossref"}]},{"given":"Gustavo Figueiredo","family":"Araujo","sequence":"additional","affiliation":[{"name":"Department of Computer Science, Universidade Federal de Lavras, 37200-900 Lavras, Brazil"}],"role":[{"role":"author","vocabulary":"crossref"}]},{"given":"Jo\u00e3o Paulo","family":"de Araujo","sequence":"additional","affiliation":[{"name":"Centre National de la Recherche Scientifique, Sorbonne University, LIP6\/DELYS, France"}],"role":[{"role":"author","vocabulary":"crossref"}]}],"member":"1968","published-online":{"date-parts":[[2020,1,1]]},"reference":[{"key":"ref_1","doi-asserted-by":"crossref","first-page":"1578","DOI":"10.1109\/TMC.2010.125","article-title":"XLP: A Cross-Layer Protocol for Efficient Communication in Wireless Sensor Networks","volume":"9","author":"Vuran","year":"2010","journal-title":"IEEE Trans. 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