  In this paper, we propose a hybrid medium access control protocol (H-MAC) for
wireless sensor networks. It is based on the IEEE 802.11's power saving
mechanism (PSM) and slotted aloha, and utilizes multiple slots dynamically to
improve performance. Existing MAC protocols for sensor networks reduce energy
consumptions by introducing variation in an active/sleep mechanism. But they
may not provide energy efficiency in varying traffic conditions as well as they
did not address Quality of Service (QoS) issues. H-MAC, the propose MAC
protocol maintains energy efficiency as well as QoS issues like latency,
throughput, and channel utilization. Our numerical results show that H-MAC has
significant improvements in QoS parameters than the existing MAC protocols for
sensor networks while consuming comparable amount of energy.
