Abstract: In order to detect the running state of oil pipeline in real time, reduce the interference between nodes of wireless sensor network (WSN) and improve network throughput, two multi-channel WSN models for the nodes distributed in a line were proposed; the models of channel assignment for single path and dual path network and their network throughputs were are discussed; the corresponding distributed MAC protocol was presented also. Field experiment results show that the single-path channel wireless sensor network not only reduces the energy consumption but also increases the network throughput; the dual path channel wireless sensor network has some fault tolerance and improves network throughput greatly, although it requires higher energy consumption.

Key words: communication, wireless sensor network, multi-channel, distributed media access control protocol, throughput