Wireless sensor networks (WSNs) are composed of hundreds of wireless sensors which collaborate to perform a common task. Because of the small size of wireless sensors, they have some serious limitations including very low computation capability and battery reserve. Such resource limitations require that WSN protocols to be extremely efficient. In this thesis, we focus on the Medium Access Control (MAC) layer in WSNs. We propose a MAC scheme, V-MAC, for WSNs that extends that lifetime of the network. We compare V-MAC with other MAC schemes. V-MAC uses a special mechanism to divide sensors in different groups and then all the members of a group go to sleep at the same time. V-MAC protects WSNs against denial of sleep and broadcast attacks. We present the V-MAC scheme in details and evaluate it with simulations. Our simulations show that V-MAC enjoys significantly higher throughput and network lifetime compared to other schemes.