Energy efficiency is the primary issue for the Medium Access Control (MAC) protocol in sensor networks. Adopting periodic sleep,adaptive listen,overhearing avoidance and message passing mechanisms,the Sensor Medium Access Control (S-MAC) protocol improves energy efficiency and latency in the network. There are mainly two methods to enhance the S-MAC protocol: dynamic adjustment,and sending control and data packets under different transport conditions. For the wireless sensor network,it is not realistic to design one MAC protocol that meets all requirements of every aspect; however,it is possible to design corresponding protocols in accordance with different requirements by flexibly adopting different methods.