Abstract: This paper presents a novel distributed MAC address assignment algorithm (Virtual Grid Spatial Reusing-VGSR) for wireless sensor networks, which reduces the size of the MAC address efficiently based on both the spatial reuse of MAC address and the mapping of the geographical position. By adjusting the communication range of sensor nodes, the VGSR algorithm can minimize the size of the MAC address and meanwhile guarantee the connectivity of the sensor network. Theoretic analysis and experimental result show that the VGSR algorithm is not only low in energy cost, but also scales well with the network size, with its performance superior to that of other existing algorithms.

Key words: wireless sensor networks, MAC address, distributed, geographical position