A wireless sensor network is a network of compact micro-sensors equipped with wireless communication capability. In a wireless sensor network, saving energy is a critical issue. Furthermore, a sensor node is expected to face many difficulties in signaling and computing. As a MAC scheme for a wireless sensor network, we thus propose an energy-aware version of pure ALOHA scheme, where rather than sacrificing the simplicity of pure ALOHA, we take a straightforward approach in saving energy by trading off throughput performance. First, we add a step of deciding between stop and continuation prior to each delivery attempt for a MAC PDU. Secondly, we find an optimal stopping rule for such a decision in consideration of the losses reflecting energy consumption as well as throughput degradation. In particular, we note that the results of delivery attempts are hardly predictable in the environment that sensor nodes contend for the error-prone wireless resource. Thus, presuming that only partial information about such results is available to sensor nodes, we explicitly draw an optimal stopping rule. Finally, numerical examples are given to demonstrate the expected losses incurred by optimal stopping rules with full and partial information.

In provisioning packet data service on wireless cellular networks, a scheme of altering connection status between mobile and base stations appeared intending to efficiently utilize resource during idle periods. In such a scheme, connection components are sequentially released as an idle period persists, while the transmitting station converts to an transmission activity mode as the station is loaded with packets. However, actual resume of transmission activity is postponed by connection retrieval time to restore lost connection components. In general, an idle period affects the following connection retrieval time, which in turn produces an impact on the forthcoming idle period. Such chain reaction also makes a significant influence on overall packet delay performance. In this paper, as a way of improving packet delay performance, we propose two schemes identified as conservative extension and load threshold schemes. In the conservative extension scheme, we intentionally extend connection retrieval times so that each connection retrieval time is guaranteed not to be lower than a certain value. On the other hand, according to the load threshold scheme, a retrieval of lost connection components is postponed until packets are accumulated at the transmitting station up to a prescribed threshold. An increase in the value and threshold incurs an additional stand-by before resuming transmission activity in both proposed schemes. In turn, such intentional stand-by may contribute to regulating the length of idle period and connection retrieval time, and subsequently improving packet delay performance. To inspect the impact of conservative extension and load threshold schemes on packet delay performance, we first investigate the properties of idle periods. Secondly, for Poisson packet arrivals, we present an analytical method to exactly calculate the moments of packet delay time (at steady state) in each scheme. From numerical examples, we confirm the existence of non-trivial optimal value and threshold minimizing average packet delay or packet delay variation and conclude that conservative extension and load threshold schemes are able to enhance packet delay performance in various environments.