Optimizing Medium Access Protocols: A Comprehensive Node-Level Performance Analysis Exploring Network Density and Data Length

Wireless Sensor Networks (WSNs) are made up of numerous small, low-power sensor nodes that work together to gather and transmit data from the environment. The successful operation of WSNs depends on robust communication protocols. Researchers have developed and evaluated numerous communication protocols and techniques aimed at offering reliable and energy-efficient communication in WSNs. Selecting an appropriate communication protocol and enhancing its performance for a certain application, on the other hand, remains a substantial challenge. In this study, we evaluate the performance of the IEEE 802.15.4 Carrier Sense Multiple Access with Collision Avoidance (CSMA/CA) protocol in a Contiki-based WSN application by measuring key Node-Level (NL) metrics like latency, Packet Delivery Ratio (PDR) and energy consumption under different network densities and with various data lengths. The results indicate the simulation-based network's usefulness in offering insights into the trade-offs between performance measures and different network setups. The findings help to understand WSN performance characteristics and may be used to drive the design and optimization of medium access protocols in real-world WSN deployments.