Distributed cooperative MAC for multihop wireless networks

This article investigates distributed cooperative medium access control protocol design for multihop wireless networks. Cooperative communication has been proposed recently as an effective way to mitigate channel impairments. With cooperation, single-antenna mobile terminals in a multi-user environment share antennas from other mobiles to generate a virtual multipleantenna system that achieves more reliable communication with a higher diversity gain. However, more mobiles conscribed for one communication inevitably induces complex medium access interactions, especially in multihop wireless ad hoc networks. To improve the network throughput and diversity gain simultaneously, we investigate the issues and challenges in designing an efficient MAC scheme for such networks. Furthermore, based on the IEEE 802.11 DCF, a cross-layer designed cooperative MAC protocol is proposed. The MAC scheme adapts to the channel condition and payload length.     

On designing MAC protocols for wireless networks using directional antennas

We investigate the possibility of using directional antennas for medium access control in wireless ad hoc networks. Previous research in ad hoc networks typically assumes the use of omnidirectional antennas at all nodes. With omnidirectional antennas, while two nodes are communicating using a given channel, MAC protocols such as IEEE 802.11 require all other nodes in the vicinity to remain silent. With directional antennas, two pairs of nodes located in each other's vicinity may potentially communicate simultaneously, increasing spatial reuse of the wireless channel. Range extension due to higher gain of directional antennas can also be useful in discovering fewer hop routes. However, new problems arise when using directional beams that simple modifications to 802.11 may not be able to mitigate. This paper identifies these problems and evaluates the tradeoffs associated with them. We also design a directional MAC protocol (MMAC) that uses multihop RTSs to establish links between distant nodes and then transmits CTS, DATA, and ACK over a single hop. While MMAC does not address all the problems identified with directional communication, it is an attempt to exploit the primary benefits of beamforming in the presence of some of these problems. Results show that MMAC can perform better than IEEE 802.11, although we find that the performance is dependent on the topology and flow patterns in the system.     

BeamMAC: A new paradigm for medium access in wireless networks

Medium access using the distributed coordination function of IEEE 802.11 is not efficient in wireless multihop networks if the devices are equipped with beamforming antennas. This paper proposes a distributed MAC protocol that goes completely away from the spatial reservation scheme of 802.11. It facilitates the use of beamforming antennas by following an announcement-objection scheme: a potential sender must “simulate” a transmission on a signaling channel before it can access the traffic channel. Based on this simulation, each receiving device estimates the expected interference and objects to the transmission if necessary. This paradigm overcomes the drawback of 802.11-based approaches that neighboring devices are silenced irrespective of whether or not they disturb signal reception. It benefits from a tight interaction of the MAC and physical layer.     

A New Air Interface Concept for Wireless Multimedia Communications beyond the 3rd Generation

This paper presents a new air interface concept for wireless multimedia communications beyond the 3rd generation. The proposed air interface uses the same physical layer as that ofETSI HiperLAN/2 and IEEE 802.11a supporting transmission rate up to 54 Mb/sto form a W-CHAMB (Wireless CHannel-oriented Ad-hoc Multihop Broadband)network. Unlike HiperLAN/2, that is based on a central control, W-CHAMB is a self-organizing network without any central control. The responsibilities of organizing andcontrolling of W-CHAMB are fully distributed among wireless stations themselves.A channel-oriented MAC protocol that is based on the dynamic channel reservation (DCR) is proposed for W-CHAMB.Energy signals (E-signals) are used to realize distributed access priorities of wireless stations, to solve the hidden station problemand to achieve a MAC level acknowledgment (ACK) for a fast ARQ.The multihop traffic performance of IEEE 802.11a and W-CHAMB is intensively evaluated stochastically based on a prototypical implementation of the protocols. The superiority of the multihop traffic performance withW-CHAMB can be seen in comparison withIEEE 802.11a.     

Performance evaluation of multihop ad hoc WLANs

Ongoing technological advances in portable devices, coupled with the need for continuous connectivity while mobile, have made ad hoc networks a compelling research and development topic, particularly in a challenging multimedia multihop scenario. The ability of IEEE 802.11's ad hoc mode of operation, as a dominating wireless local area network (WLAN) protocol, to serve multihop networks requires thorough investigation. In this article, through considering crucial real-life physical phenomena and avoiding as many confining assumptions as possible, system performance measures such as delay and packet failure rate are evaluated. As a result, the importance of adequate selection of the system parameters toward performance improvement is underscored. Moreover, the simulation results imply that by complementing through priority provisions, coordination, route reservation, clustering, and optimum channel coding considerations, the IEEE 802.11 medium access control (MAC) protocol can survive in a multihop scenario. The custom simulation environment developed features modularity, comprising traffic generator, mobility, wireless channel, and IEEE 802.11 protocol modules, and is capable of accommodating many more of the physical phenomena involved.     

A distributed coordination scheme to improve the performance of IEEE 802.11 in multi-hop networks

This paper investigates the performance of IEEE 802.11 in multi-hop scenarios and shows how its aggressive behavior can throttle the spatial reuse and reduce bandwidth efficiency. An adaptive, layer-2, distributed coordination scheme for 802.11 using explicit medium access control (MAC) feedback is then proposed to pace the transmissions on adjacent nodes, thereby assisting the MAC protocol to operate around its saturation state while minimizing resource contention. Simulation results show that the proposed scheme outperforms the original 802.11 MAC.     

On a Distributed Cognitive MAC Protocol for IEEE 802.11s Wireless Mesh Networks

A distributed frequency agile medium access control (MAC) extension to the IEEE 802.11s for the next generation wireless mesh networks is proposed. The introduced protocol enhancements are capable of concurrent deployment of existing frequency opportunities in order to coordinate simultaneous data transmissions. The root concept is mainly based on the deployment of well-known ISM frequency bands, where the legacy 802.11-based wireless equipments operate, as the common control channel in order to establish contemporaneous transmissions. We apply the aforementioned key concept to the IEEE 802.11s common channel framework to attain two important goals: To improve the channel utilization using the concept of cognitive radio, and to lower the access delay. Through extensive event-driven simulations, taking into account primary user appearance in non-ISM frequency bands, performance of the proposed MAC enhancement is evaluated showing its higher efficiency compared to the existing solutions, in addition to its better wireless medium management.     

A wireless MAC protocol using implicit pipelining

In distributed multiple access control protocols, two categories of overhead are usually associated with contention resolution. One is channel idle overhead, where all contending stations are waiting to transmit. Another is collision overhead, which occurs when multiple contending stations attempt to transmit simultaneously. Either idle overhead or collision overhead being large, contention resolution algorithm would be inefficient. Prior research work tries to minimize both the idle and the collision overheads using various methods. In this paper, we propose to apply "pipelining" techniques to the design of multiple access control protocol so that channel idle overhead could be (partially) hidden and the collision overhead could be reduced. While the concept of pipelined scheduling can be applied to various MAC protocol designs in general, in this paper, we focus on its application to IEEE 802.11 DCF. In particular, an implicitly pipelined dual-stage contention resolution MAC protocol (named DSCR) is proposed. With IEEE 802.11, the efficiency of contention resolution degrades dramatically with the increasing load due to high probability of collision. Using the implicit pipelining technique, DSCR hides the majority of channel idle time and reduces the collision probability, hence, improves channel utilization, average access delay, and access energy cost over 802.11 significantly both in wireless LANs and in multihop networks. The simulation results, as well as some analysis, are presented to demonstrate the effectiveness of DSCR.     

Busy tone contention protocol: a new high‐throughput and energy‐efficient wireless local area network medium access control protocol using busy tone

Design of an efficient wireless medium access control (MAC) protocol is a challenging task due to the time‐varying characteristics of wireless communication channel and different delay requirements in diverse applications. To support variable number of active stations and varying network load conditions, random access MAC protocols are employed. Existing wireless local area network (WLAN) protocol (IEEE 802.11) is found to be inefficient at high data rates because of the overhead associated with the contention resolution mechanism employed. The new amendments of IEEE 802.11 that support multimedia traffic (IEEE 802.11e) are at the expense of reduced data traffic network efficiency. In this paper, we propose a random access MAC protocol called busy tone contention protocol (BTCP) that uses out‐of‐band signals for contention resolution in WLANs. A few variants of this protocol are also proposed to meet the challenges in WLAN environments and application requirements. The proposed BTCP isolate multimedia traffics from background data transmissions and gives high throughput irrespective of the number of contending stations in the network. As a result, in BTCP, admission control of multimedia flows becomes simple and well defined. Studies of the protocol, both analytically and through simulations under various network conditions, have shown to give better performance in comparison with the IEEE 802.11 distributed coordination function. Copyright © 2011 John Wiley & Sons, Ltd.     

TCP Performance in IEEE 802.11-Based Ad Hoc Networks with Multiple Wireless Lossy Links

We propose a packet-level model to investigate the impact of channel error on the transmission control protocol (TCP) performance over IEEE-802.11-based multihop wireless networks. A Markov renewal approach is used to analyze the behavior of TCP Reno and TCP Impatient NewReno. Compared to previous work, our main contributions are listed as follows: 1) modeling multiple lossy links, 2) investigating the interactions among TCP, Internet Protocol (IP), and media access control (MAC) protocol layers, specifically the impact of 802.11 MAC protocol and dynamic source routing (DSR) protocol on TCP throughput performance, 3) considering the spatial reuse property of the wireless channel, the model takes into account the different proportions between the interference range and transmission range, and 4) adopting more accurate and realistic analysis to the fast recovery process and showing the dependency of throughput and the risk of experiencing successive fast retransmits and timeouts on the packet error probability. The analytical results are validated against simulation results by using GloMoSim. The results show that the impact of the channel error is reduced significantly due to the packet retransmissions on a per-hop basis and a small bandwidth delay product of ad hoc networks. The TCP throughput always deteriorates less than ~ 10 percent, with a packet error rate ranging from 0 to 0.1. Our model also provides a theoretical basis for designing an optimum long retry limit for IEEE 802.11 in ad hoc networks.     

Selfish MAC layer misbehavior in wireless networks

Wireless medium access control (MAC) protocols such as IEEE 802.11 use distributed contention resolution mechanisms for sharing the wireless channel. In this environment, selfish hosts that fail to adhere to the MAC protocol may obtain an unfair throughput share. For example, IEEE 802.11 requires hosts competing for access to the channel to wait for a "backoff" interval, randomly selected from a specified range/before initiating a transmission. Selfish hosts may wait for smaller backoff intervals than well-behaved hosts, thereby obtaining an unfair advantage. We present modifications to the IEEE 802.11 protocol to simplify detection of such selfish hosts and analyze the optimality of the chosen strategy. We also present a penalty scheme for punishing selfish misbehavior. We develop two misbehavior models to capture the behavior of misbehaving hosts. Simulation results under these misbehavior models indicate that our detection and penalty schemes are successful in handling MAC layer misbehavior.     

IEEE802.11e EDCA和CFB下饱和吞吐量分析

IEEE802.11eMAC草案规范对IEEE802.11无线局域网标准在QOS方面加以了补充。IEEE802.11e采用2种协调机制基于控制的综合协调可控信道接入方式HCCA和基于竞争的增强型分布式信道接入方式EDCA。主要评估EDCA和竞争空闲脉冲(contention-freeburst)CFB相结合时,在系统负载过载的情况下,改变性能参数后系统饱和吞吐量的变化,并分析系统性能参数对饱和吞吐量的影响,从而达到系统参数优化的作用。     

IEEE 802.11 medium access control enhancements based on simultaneous multiple‐input multiple‐output bandwidth sharing

The demand for higher data rate has spurred the adoption of multiple‐input multiple‐output (MIMO) transmission techniques in IEEE 802.11 products. MIMO techniques provide an additional spatial dimension that can significantly increase the channel capacity. A number of multiuser MIMO system have been proposed, where the multiple antenna at the physical layer are employed for multiuser access, allowing multiple users to share the same bandwidth. As these MIMO physical layer technologies further evolve, the usable bandwidth per application increases; hence, the average service time per application decreases. However, in the IEEE 802.11 distributed coordination function‐based systems, a considerable amount of bandwidth is wasted during the medium access and coordination process. Therefore, as the usable bandwidth is enhanced using MIMO technology, the bandwidth wastage of medium access and coordination becomes a significant performance bottleneck. Hence, there is a fundamental need for bandwidth sharing schemes at the medium access control (MAC) layer where multiple connections can concurrently use the increased bandwidth provided by the physical layer MIMO technologies. In this paper, we propose the MIMO‐aware rate splitting (MRS) MAC protocol and examine its behavior under different scenarios. MRS is a distributed MAC protocol where nodes locally cooperate with one another to share bandwidth via splitting the spatial channels of MIMO systems. Simulation results of MRS protocol are obtained and compared with those of IEEE 802.11n protocol. We show that our proposed MRS scheme can significantly outperform the IEEE 802.11n in medium access delay and throughput. Copyright © 2012 John Wiley & Sons, Ltd.     

Does the IEEE 802.11 MAC protocol work well in multihop wireless adhoc networks?

The IEEE 802.11 MAC protocol is the standard for wireless LANs; it is widely used in testbeds and simulations for wireless multihop ad hoc networks. However, this protocol was not designed for multihop networks. Although it can support some ad hoc network architecture, it is not intended to support the wireless mobile ad hoc network, in which multihop connectivity is one of the most prominent features. In this article we focus on the following question: can the IEEE 802.11 MAC protocol function well in multihop networks? By presenting several serious problems encountered in an IEEE 802.11-based multihop network and revealing the in-depth cause of these problems, we conclude that the current version of this wireless LAN protocol does not function well in multihop ad hoc networks. We thus doubt whether the WaveLAN-based system is workable as a mobile ad hoc testbed     

Design and performance of an enhanced IEEE 802.11 MAC protocol for multihop coverage extension

Ad hoc communication is gaining popularity, not only for pure ad hoc communication networks but also as a viable solution for coverage extension in wireless networks. Especially for upcoming WLAN hotspots, this is an interesting option to decrease installation costs. In this article we introduce a new MAC protocol that needs only marginal changes to the standard and enables efficient multihop networking. We advocate the use of multiple IEEE 802.11 channels, where one channel is reserved as a common signalling channel for the task of assigning the others (data channels) among wireless terminals. The proposed MAC protocols are based on a four-way handshake over the common signalling channel, while data transmission occurs on a dedicated channel. We propose a further optimization applying multiple wireless network interface cards. This improvement in performance comes at the price of a slightly more complex hardware. Two different simulation models are implemented to investigate our approach. The first model investigates the MAC protocol and its improvements, while the second model analyzes the multihop performance in terms of delivery ratio and transmission delay. BY means of numerous simulations we present the performance of our MAC approach in comparison with two standard approaches in terms of bandwidth, packet delivery, and transmission delay. For our performance evaluation we apply the IEEE 802.11a technology, but we note that our approach can also be used for IEEE 802.11b.     

Performance Analysis for a New Medium Access Control Protocol in Wireless LANs

One fundamental issue in high-speed wireless local area networks (LANs) is to develop efficient medium access control (MAC) protocols. In this paper, we focus on the performance improvement in both MAC layer and transport layer by using a novel medium access control protocol for high-speed wireless LANs deploying carrier sense multiple access/collision avoidance (CSMA/CA). We first present a recently proposed distributed contention-based MAC protocol utilizing a Fast Collision Resolution (FCR) algorithm and show that the proposed FCR algorithm provides high throughput and low latency while improving the fairness performance. The performance of the FCR algorithm is compared with that of the IEEE 802.11 MAC algorithm via extensive simulation studies on both MAC layer and transport layer. The results show that the FCR algorithm achieves a significantly higher efficiency than the IEEE 802.11 MAC and can significantly improve transport layer performance.     

Optimal MAC packet size in networks without cut-through routing

This paper presents an analytical method of optimal breaking of a transmission control protocol (TCP)/Internet protocol (IP) message into medium access control (MAC) packets in networks without cut-through routing (such as networks compliant with the IEEE 802.11 wireless local area network standard). The method accounts for the transmission delay of acknowledgement frames, the sliding window flow control in TCP/IP protocol, error control via retransmissions, and heterogeneity of transport parameters (link-to-link and upstream-downstream) along a multihop network path. Mathematically, the problem consists in minimizing the TCP/IP message transaction time, a nonlinear function of the MAC packet size, in the presence of a set of linear restrictions. Throughput calculations illustrating this method are performed using IEEE 802.11 data.     

Model-based admission control for IEEE 802.11e enhanced distributed channel access

IEEE 802.11e enhanced distributed channel access (EDCA) is a distributed medium access scheme based on carrier sense multiple access with collision avoidance (CSMA/CA) protocol. In this paper, a model-based admission control (MBAC) scheme that performs real-timely at medium access control (MAC) layer is proposed for the decision of accepting or rejecting requests for adding traffic streams to an IEEE 802.11e EDCA wireless local area network (WLAN). The admission control strategy is implemented in access point (AP), which employs collision probability and access delay measures from active flows to estimate throughput and packet delay of each traffic class by the proposed unsaturation analytical model. Simulation results prove accuracy of the proposed analytical model and effectiveness of MBAC scheme.     

DCMA: A Label Switching MAC for Efficient Packet Forwarding in Multihop Wireless Networks

This paper addresses the problem of efficient packet forwarding in a multihop, wireless "mesh" network. We present an efficient interface contained forwarding (ICF) architecture for a "wireless router," i.e., a forwarding node with a single wireless network interface card (NIC) in a multihop wireless network that allows a packet to be forwarded entirely within the NIC of the forwarding node without requiring per-packet intervention by the node's CPU. To effectively forward packets in a pipelined fashion without incurring the 802.11-related overheads of multiple independent channel accesses, we specify a slightly modified version of the 802.11 MAC, called data driven cut-through multiple access (DCMA) that uses multiprotocol label switching (MPLS)-like labels in the control packets, in conjunction with a combined ACK/RTS packet, to reduce 802.11 channel access latencies. Our proposed technique can be used in combination with "frame bursting" as specified by the IEEE 802.11e standard to provide an end-to-end cut-through channel access. Using extensive simulations, we compare the performance of DCMA with 802.11 DCF MAC with respect to throughput and latency and suggest a suitable operating region to get maximum benefits using our mechanism as compared to 802.11     

Analytical modeling of bidirectional multi‐channel IEEE 802.11 MAC protocols

This paper presents an analytical approach to model the bi‐directional multi‐channel IEEE 802.11 MAC protocols (Bi‐MCMAC) for ad hoc networks. Extensive simulation work has been done for the performance evaluation of IEEE 802.11 MAC protocols. Since simulation has several limitations, this work is primarily based on the analytical approach. The objective of this paper is to show analytically the performance advantages of Bi‐MCMAC protocol over the classical IEEE 802.11 MAC protocol. The distributed coordination function (DCF) mode of medium access control (MAC) is considered in the modeling. Two different channel scheduling strategies, namely, random channel selection and fastest channel first selection strategy are also presented in the presence of multiple channels with different transmission rates. M/G/1 queue is used to model the protocols, and stochastic reward nets (SRNs) are employed as a modeling technique as it readily captures the synchronization between events in the DCF mode of access. The average system throughput, mean delay, and server utilization of each MAC protocol are evaluated using the SRN formalism. We also validate our analytical model by comparison with simulation results. The results obtained through the analytical modeling approach illustrate the performance advantages of Bi‐MCMAC protocols with the fastest channel first scheduling strategy over the classical IEEE 802.11 protocol for TCP traffic in wireless ad hoc networks. Copyright © 2010 John Wiley & Sons, Ltd.