Collision-minimizing CSMA and its applications to wireless sensor networks

Recent research in sensor networks, wireless location systems, and power-saving in ad hoc networks suggests that some applications' wireless traffic be modeled as an event-driven workload: a workload where many nodes send traffic at the time of an event, not all reports of the event are needed by higher level protocols and applications, and events occur infrequently relative to the time needed to deliver all required event reports. We identify several applications that motivate the event-driven workload and propose a protocol that is optimal for this workload. Our proposed protocol, named CSMA/p/sup */, is nonpersistent carrier sense multiple access (CSMA) with a carefully chosen nonuniform probability distribution p/sup */ that nodes use to randomly select contention slots. We show that CSMA/p/sup */ is optimal in the sense that p/sup */ is the unique probability distribution that minimizes collisions between contending stations. CSMA/p/sup */ has knowledge of N. We conclude with an exploration of how p/sup */ could be used to build a more practical medium access control protocol via a probability distribution with no knowledge of N that approximates p/sup */.     

Collision Free Mobility Adaptive (CFMA) MAC for wireless sensor networks

In this paper we propose high throughput collision free, mobility adaptive and energy efficient medium access protocol (MAC) called Collision Free Mobility Adaptive (CFMA) for wireless sensor networks. CFMA ensures that transmissions incur no collisions, and allows nodes to undergo sleep mode whenever they are not transmitting or receiving. It uses delay allocation scheme based on traffic priority at each node and avoids allocating same backoff delay for more than one node unless they are in separate clusters. It also allows nodes to determine when they can switch to sleep mode during operation. CFMA for mobile nodes provides fast association between the mobile node and the cluster coordinator. The proposed MAC performs well in both static and mobile scenarios, which shows its significance over existing MAC protocols proposed for mobile applications. The performance of CFMA is evaluated through extensive simulation, analysis and comparison with other mobility aware MAC protocols. The results show that CFMA outperforms significantly the existing CSMA/CA, Sensor Mac (S-MAC), Mobile MAC (MOB-MAC), Adaptive Mobility MAC (AM-MAC), Mobility Sensor MAC (MS-MAC), Mobility aware Delay sensitive MAC (MD-MAC) and Dynamic Sensor MAC (DS-MAC) protocols including throughput, latency and energy consumption.     

Performance Analysis of Contention Based Medium Access Control Protocols

This paper studies the performance of contention based medium access control (MAC) protocols. In particular, a simple and accurate technique for estimating the throughput of the IEEE 802.11 DCF protocol is developed. The technique is based on a rigorous analysis of the Markov chain that corresponds to the time evolution of the back-off processes at the contending nodes. An extension of the technique is presented to handle the case where service differentiation is provided with the use of heterogeneous protocol parameters, as, for example, in IEEE 802.11e EDCA protocol. Our results provide new insights into the operation of such protocols. The techniques developed in the paper are applicable to a wide variety of contention based MAC protocols.      

m-DIBCR: MAC Protocol with Multiple-Step Distributed In-Band Channel Reservation

A new medium access control (MAC) protocol to handle packet collisions is proposed. Different from traditional MAC protocols, where only one-step reservation is considered, we propose a multiple-step distributed in-band channel reservation, called m-DIBCR, where m represents the number of steps we consider in the channel reservation. In the protocol, each node maintains m timers, each of which serves as the backoff timer for one of the next m packets to be sent. A node broadcasts the initial values of these timers by piggybacking them in the data packet, and simultaneous transmissions can be avoided when its neighboring nodes overhear these values. Extensive simulations show that, compared with one-step channel reservation, throughput can be dramatically improved by multiple-step channel reservation, especially in networks with high transmission error probabilities and/or a large number of contending nodes.     

A load awareness medium access control protocol for single‐hop wireless ad hoc networks

A contention‐based wireless ad hoc medium access control (MAC) protocol, such as carrier sense multiple access with collision avoidance (CSMA/CA), has excellent efficiency when the system is light loaded. The main drawback of such protocols is their inefficiency and unbounded delay when the system load is heavy. On the other hand, a contention‐free MAC protocol, such as token passing, has a better and fair throughput when the system is heavy loaded. The main drawback of such protocols is their inefficiency when only a small amount of users want to transmit. In this paper, we propose a new load awareness single‐hop wireless ad hoc MAC protocol (which is called the LA protocol) that exploits the benefits of both contention‐based and contention‐free protocols. A contention‐based MAC protocol is used when the system is light loaded and a contention‐free one is used otherwise. Our LA protocol, which operates in a distributed fashion and is fully compatible with the IEEE 802.11 wireless local area network (WLAN) standard, can switch smoothly between the contention‐based protocol and the contention‐free one. Simulation results show that our protocol indeed extracts the better part of two kinds of protocols. Copyright © 2006 John Wiley & Sons, Ltd.     

Using Incompletely Cooperative Game Theory in Wireless Mesh Networks

Recently, game theory has become a useful and powerful tool in research on wireless mesh networks. In this article the authors present a novel concept of incompletely cooperative game theory and use it to improve the performance of MAC protocols in WMNs. In this game, first, each node estimates the current game state (e.g., the number of competing nodes). Second, the node adjusts its equilibrium strategy by tuning its local contention parameters (e.g., the minimum contention window) to the estimated game state. Finally, the game is repeated several times to get the optimal performance. To use the game effectively in WMNs, the authors present a hybrid CSMA/CA protocol by integrating a proposed virtual CSMA/CA and the standard CSMA/CA protocol. When a node has no packet to send, it contends for the channel in virtual CSMA/CA mode. In this way the node can estimate the game state and obtain the optimal strategy. When a node has packets to send, it contends for the channel in standard CSMA/CA mode with the optimal strategy obtained in virtual CSMA/CA mode, switching smoothly from virtual to standard CSMA/CA mode. At the same time, the node keeps adjusting its strategy to the variable game state. In addition, the authors propose a simplified game-theoretic MAC protocol (G-CSMA/CA) by designing an auto degressive backoff mechanism based on the incompletely cooperative game. G-CSMA/CA can easily be implemented in mesh nodes. Finally, simulation results show that the incompletely cooperative game can increase system throughput, decrease delay, jitter, and packet loss rate, and support the game effectively.     

An Efficient Backoff Algorithm for IEEE 802.15.4 Wireless Sensor Networks

IEEE 802.15.4 is one of the most prominent MAC protocol standard designed to achieve low-power, low-cost, and low-rate wireless personal area networks. The contention access period of IEEE 802.15.4 employs carrier sense multiple access with collision avoidance (CSMA/CA) algorithm. A long random backoff time causes longer average delay, while a small one gives a high collision rate. In this paper, we propose an efficient backoff algorithm, called EBA-15.4MAC that enhances the performance of slotted CSMA/CA algorithm. EBA-15.4MAC is designed based on two new techniques; firstly, it updates the contention window size based on the probability of collision parameter. Secondly, EBA-15.4MAC resolves the problem of access collision via the deployment of a novel Temporary Backoff (TB) and Next Temporary Backoff (NTB). In this case, the nodes not choose backoff exponent randomly as mentioned in the standard but they select TB and NTB values which can be 10–50 % of the actual backoff delay selected by the node randomly. By using these two new methods, EBA-15.4MAC minimizes the level of collision since the probability of two nodes selecting the same backoff period will be low. To evaluate the performance of EBA-15.4MAC mechanism, the network simulator has been conducted. Simulation results demonstrate that the proposed scheme significantly improves the throughput, delivery ratio, power consumption and average delay.     

A Wireless MAC Protocol with Collision Detection

The most popular strategies for dealing with packet collisions at the medium access control (MAC) layer in distributed wireless networks use a combination of carrier sensing and collision avoidance. When the collision avoidance strategy fails, such schemes cannot detect collisions and corrupted data frames are still transmitted in their entirety, thereby wasting the channel bandwidth and significantly reducing the network throughput. To address this problem, this paper proposes a new wireless MAC protocol capable of collision detection. The basic idea of the proposed protocol is the use of pulses in an out-of-band control channel for exploring channel condition and medium reservation and achieving both collision avoidance and collision detection. The performance of the proposed MAC protocol has been investigated using extensive analysis and simulations. Our results show that, as compared with existing MAC protocols, the proposed protocol has significant performance gains in terms of node throughput. Additionally, the proposed protocol is fully distributed and requires no time synchronization among nodes.     

Fair MAC protocol for optical ring network of wavelength-shared access nodes

In this paper, a WDM optical ring consisting of access nodes with fixed transmitter-n fixed receivers (FT—FR ⁿ ) is considered. As access nodes share a wavelength channel there is trade-off between node throughput and fairness among them. In order to abbreviate the transmission unfairness and to increase the throughput, we propose p-persistent medium access control (MAC) protocol. Each node uses the carrier sense multiple access with collision avoidance (CSMA/CA) protocol to transmit packets, and decides whether to use a local empty slot with probability p when a transferred packet based on source-stripping is dropped and emptied. Numerical prediction for the proposed MAC protocol is introduced to compute the maximum node throughput under uniform traffic condition. For more detail results, we use network simulation with self-similar traffic and introduce various results. The proposed MAC protocol gives better node throughput than non-persistent protocol and shows an improved fairness factor than 1-persistent protocol. Through simulation, we also find the reasonable probability of p-persistent protocol for a given architecture.     

An Improved Contention Access Mechanism for FPRP to Increase Throughput

Five‐phase reservation protocol (FPRP) is a contention‐based media access control protocol for wireless ad hoc networks. FPRP uses a five‐phase reservation process to establish slot assignments based on time division multiple access. It allows a node to reserve only one slot in an information frame. Once a node has reserved a slot, it will cease contending for other slots. As a result, there may be less contending nodes in the remaining slots, so the time slots in an information frame are not fully used by FPRP. To improve time slot utilization, this paper proposes an improved pseudo‐Bayesian algorithm, based on which an improved contention access mechanism for FPRP is proposed, in which nodes are allowed to contend for more than one slot in a reservation frame according to a certain probability/priority. Simulation results indicate that the proposed mechanism performs better than FPRP in time slot utilization and hence the network throughput under various scenarios.     

Quality-of-service in ad hoc carrier sense multiple access wirelessnetworks

Carrier sense multiple access (CSMA) is one of the most pervasive medium access control (MAC) schemes in ad hoc, wireless networks. However, CSMA and its current variants do not provide quality-of-service (QoS) guarantees for real-time traffic support. This paper presents and studies black-burst (BB) contention, which is a distributed MAC scheme that provides QoS real-time access to ad hoc CSMA wireless networks. With this scheme, real-time nodes contend for access to the channel with pulses of energy-so called BBs-the durations of which are a function of the delay incurred by the nodes until the channel became idle. It is shown that real-time packets are not subject to collisions and that they have access priority over data packets. When operated in an ad hoc wireless LAN, BB contention further guarantees bounded and typically very small real-time delays. The performance of the network can approach that attained under ideal time division multiplexing (TDM) via a distributed algorithm that groups real-time packet transmissions into chains. A general analysis of BB contention is given, contemplating several modes of operation. The analysis provides conditions for the scheme to be stable. Its results are complemented with simulations that evaluate the performance of an ad hoc wireless LAN with a mixed population of data and real-time nodes     

RIM-MAC：一种适用于水下传感网接收者发起的多会话MAC协议

声通信是水下传感网的主要通信方式之一,但是它具有长延迟和低带宽的特点,这是水下传感网MAC（media access control）协议研究面临的主要挑战。为提高网络吞吐量,提出了一种接收者发起的多会话MAC协议（RIM-MAC）。它利用接收者发起会话,通过一次会话的4次握手完成所有邻居数据分组的传输,有效地减少握手次数。同时利用侦听到的本地信息（邻居延迟图和邻居的传输调度）避免信道冲突并发起多个会话,这解决了长传播延迟带来的信道利用率低的问题。RIM-MAC通过增强节点间并行传输的能力,在接收者和发送者两端提高时空复用率,与经典水下MAC协议比,网络吞吐量提高了至少36%。除此之外,基于自适应数据轮询策略提出了一种网络负载公平算法（FTA）,它保证了网络中竞争节点间的信道访问的公平性。仿真实验表明,在长传播延迟的场景下,RIM-MAC取得了比典型的水下传感网MAC协议更好的吞吐量性能。     

移动Ad HOc网络中的公平按需多址接入协议

基于快速、有效竞争预约接入、无冲突轮询传输的思想和带冲突预防的冲突分解策略,本文提出了适于移动Ad Hoc网络的公平按需多址接入(FODA)协议.该协议在分群结构的基础上,利用公平冲突预防算法预约信道资源获得轮询服务,从而完全消除了载波侦听方式下多跳无线网络业务传输中的隐藏终端和暴露终端问题.另外,公平冲突预防算法解决了节点竞争接入时的冲突问题和不公平现象.最后,仿真结果表明,与带冲突避免的载波侦听多址接入(CSMA/CA)和轮询协议相比,FODA协议可以提供较高的信道吞吐量、较低的平均消息丢弃率和平均消息时延.     

Performance Analysis of a Flexible MAC Protocol for Real-Time Services in Vehicular Ad-Hoc Networks

Several MAC protocols for ad-hoc networks have been proposed in the literature for topologies with a large number of nodes. In particular, the MAC protocols based on 802.11 cannot guarantee the delays needed by real-time traffic, as they are mainly based on the CSMA/CA random access scheme, which inserts significant random inter-frame delay components, strongly dependent on network load. Other MAC protocols assign dynamically a dedicated channel to each connected node. In this way, it is possible to guarantee a strictly controlled delay for real-time traffic at the expense of a greater bandwidth waste. The goal of this paper is to evaluate the performance of a MAC protocol of this latter family. Our analysis is focused on scenarios with fast moving users, while in the literature most of the proposed MACs, also for mobile ad-hoc networks, are studied in the case of stationary users. Our study shows that the system performance strongly depends on the users’ speed and provides an accurate analysis of the performance degradation registered as speed grows.     

Design and performance comparison of multiple-token based MAC protocols for optical burst switched ring networks

Optical burst switching (OBS) has been proposed as a new optical switching paradigm for the next generation Internet due to its flexibility and feasibility compared to OCS and OPS. Moreover, serving as a backbone that interconnects a number of access networks, OBS ring topologies have been a good choice for solving the current metro gap problem between core network and access network owning to its simplicity and scalability. In this paper, we provide an insight into the OBS ring network that consists of nodes using TT–TR (Tunable Transmitter–Tunable Receiver). The node architectures with TT–TR may make efficient use of network resources even though traffic pattern, such as IP traffic with self-similarity dynamically change, and can support good expandability. However, all nodes share the limited network resources. This may result in contention such as wavelength contention and transceiver contention leading to burst loss. In order to use the shared network resources fairly and efficiently as well as reducing the resource contention, we focus on the design of medium access control (MAC) protocols based on multiple tokens. Each token is allocated to one wavelength to denote the accessibility of that wavelength, i.e., once the token is captured, the corresponding wavelength can be used to transmit a burst. As tokens hold the key for using wavelengths to transmit bursts, token management including the token release time is crucial in the proposed MAC protocols. Thus, two kinds of multiple-token based MAC protocols with different token release times are proposed: token release after transmitting burst (TRTB) and token release after transmitting control header (TRTC). Each of them is classified into two schemes called TRTB/TRR and TRTB/RCA and correspondingly TRTC/TRR and TRTC/ RCA. RCA stands for receive collision avoidance. The target is to increase the performance while reducing the processing overhead at each node. The performance of the TRTB and TRTC protocols are evaluated and compared in terms of queuing delay, burst loss rate, and channel utilization by OPNET simulation. The effects of various design parameters are also investigated through simulation in order to evaluate their scalability. In all the proposed schemes, tokens are just used to denote the accessibility of each wavelength. Finally, as an alternative, we also propose a new scheme based on the TRTC protocol called TRTC/CAT (collision avoidance by tokens) to avoid contention by using tokens.

A schedule‐based medium access control protocol for mobile wireless sensor networks

Recent advances in body area network technologies such as radio frequency identification and ham radio, to name a few, have introduced a huge gap between the use of current wireless sensor network technologies and specific needs of some important wireless sensor network applications such as medical care, disaster relief, or emergency preparedness and response. In these types of applications, the mobility of nodes can occur, leading to the challenge of mobility handling. In this paper, we address this challenge by prioritizing transmissions of mobile nodes over static nodes. This is achieved by using shorter contention windows in reservation slots for mobile nodes (the so‐called backoff technique) combined with a novel hybrid medium access control (MAC) protocol (the so‐called versatile MAC). The proposed protocol advocates channel reuse for bandwidth efficiency and management purpose. Through extensive simulations, our protocol is compared with other MAC alternatives such as time division multiple access and IEEE 802.11 with request to send/clear to send exchange, chosen as benchmarks. The performance metrics used are bandwidth utilization, fairness of medium access, and energy consumption. The superiority of versatile MAC against the studied benchmark protocols is established with respect to these metrics. Copyright © 2012 John Wiley & Sons, Ltd.     

An optimized and power savings protocol for mobility energy-aware in wireless sensor networks

Mobility management in Wireless Sensor Networks (WSNs) is a complex problem that must be taken into account in all layers of the protocol stack. But this mobility becomes very challenging at the MAC level in order to do not degrade the energy efficiency between sensor nodes that are in communication. However, among medium access protocols, sampling protocols reflect better the dynamics of such scenarios. Nevertheless, the main problem, of such protocols, remains the management of collisions and idle listening between nodes. Previous approaches like B-MAC and X-MAC, based on sampling protocols present some shortcomings. Therefore, we address the mobility issue of WSNs that use as medium access sampling protocols. Firstly, we propose a mobile access solution based on the X-MAC protocol which remains a reference protocol. This protocol, called MoX-MAC, incorporates different mechanisms that enables to mitigate the energy consumption of mobile sensor nodes. Furthermore, we extend our former work (Ba et al. in Proc. of IEEE WMNC, 2011) by evaluating the lifetime of static nodes with respect to MoX-MAC protocol, as well determine the degree of depletion of static nodes due to the presence of mobile nodes.     

Collision-free operation in ad hoc carrier sense multiple access wireless networks

The CSMA/CA algorithm proposed in the IEEE 802.11 standard does not exclude collisions between transmitted packets. Regardless of whether RTS/CTS packets are used or not, these collisions do always have a more or less negative effect on system performance, especially at high loads. In this letter a method of avoiding collisions by using busy energy bursts is proposed. The algorithm used is based on the 802.11 standard and depends only on the assumption that each node can hear the transmissions of all other nodes. Collisions are avoided by transmitting short sequences of energy bursts without the need of any further communication between nodes contending for the use of the channel. The proposed method provides better average packet delays also as higher maximum system loads than conventional CSMA/CA. In addition to this, it renders the use of acknowledgment packets unnecessary.     

A Dynamic Adaptation Mechanism for Traffic Conditions in Wireless Sensor Network

As overall network traffic pursue to expand, a lot of low-power medium access control protocols have been proposed to deal with burst traffic in wireless sensor network. Although most of them provide low throughput but do not well optimize the energy consumption. In this paper, we propose a new hybrid carrier sense multiple access with collision avoidance (CSMA/CA) and time division multiple access (TDMA) protocol that arranges nodes into two categories of priority according to their traffic rate and data transmission delay. Nodes that have continuous data should send its data during the contention free period, those one will be classified as low priority and its data will be scheduling using TDMA. Others nodes who have a random data should transmit it immediately during the contention access period (CAP) using a fuzzy logic algorithm, based on their queue length and implemented in the CSMA/CA algorithm. Therefore, the proposed scheme dynamically changes the CAP length to ensure that nodes can complete its transaction during the same super-frame. Simulation results are done using the network simulator tools (NS-2) and have improved good efficiency regarding the IEEE 802.15.4 standard. The mechanism has improved the energy consumption, minimised the packet loss probability, increased the throughput variation in the network and also minimised the average end to end delay.     

Saturation throughput analysis of a carrier sensing based MU-MIMO MAC protocol in a WLAN under fading and shadowing

In wireless local area networks (WLANs), the traditional carrier sense multiple access with collision avoidance (CSMA/CA) medium access control (MAC) protocol cannot use the full benefits from multiuser multiple-input multiple-output (MU-MIMO) technique due to random medium access of the users. In this paper, we propose a carrier sensing based MAC protocol for a MU-MIMO based WLAN with full utilization of MU-MIMO technique. By modeling the WLAN system under the proposed MAC protocol as a discrete time Markov chain, we develop an analytical model for computing the saturation throughput in presence of path loss, Rayleigh fading and log-normal shadowing. The analytical model is then validated via simulation. By means of numerical and simulation results, we demonstrate that the proposed MAC protocol significantly improves throughput performance than the traditional CSMA/CA MAC protocol. Further, we compare the performance of the proposed MAC protocol with a MU-MIMO MAC protocol called Uni-MUMAC protocol and find that the proposed MAC protocol performs better than the Uni-MUMAC protocol. We also explore the effect of some of the network and wireless channel parameters on the performance of the proposed MAC protocol.