A hybrid multi-channel MAC protocol for wireless ad hoc networks

In a regular wireless ad hoc network, the Medium Access Control (MAC) protocol coordinates channel access among nodes, and the throughput of the network is limited by the bandwidth of a single channel. The multi-channel MAC protocols can exploit multiple channels to achieve high network throughput by enabling more concurrent transmissions. In this paper, we propose a hybrid and adaptive protocol, called H-MMAC, which utilizes multi-channel resources more efficiently than other multi-channel MAC protocols. The main idea is to adopt the IEEE 802.11 Power Saving Mechanism and to allow nodes to transmit data packets while other nodes try to negotiate the data channel during the Ad hoc Traffic Indication Message window based on the network traffic load. The analytical and simulation results show that the proposed H-MMAC protocol improves the network performance significantly in terms of the aggregate throughput, average delay, fairness and energy efficiency.     

A Robust and Cooperative MAC Protocol for IEEE 802.11a Wireless Networks

In wireless networks, it is well known that the interference of hidden nodes can interrupt frame receptions. Although several solutions have been proposed to alleviate the problem of DATA corruptions at receivers, control frame corruptions at transmitters have not been considered yet. In this paper, we propose an enhanced MAC protocol, called Robust and Cooperative Medium Access Control (RCMAC), to improve the network throughput and fairness by reducing control frame losses at transmitters. RCMAC uses a relay mechanism to allow transmitters of long distance links to receive control frames more robustly by relaying control frames via relay nodes. Furthermore, RCMAC improves the network throughput through fast two-hop DATA transmissions via relay nodes. Our extensive simulation results show that RCMAC has better performance than existing well-known MAC protocols.     

Design of MAC protocols with fast collision resolution for wireless local area networks

Development of efficient medium access control (MAC) protocols providing both high throughput performance for data traffic and good quality of service (QoS) support for real-time traffic is the current major focus in distributed contention-based MAC protocol research. In this paper, we propose an efficient contention resolution algorithm for wireless local area networks, namely, the fast collision resolution (FCR) algorithm. The MAC protocol with this new algorithm attempts to provide significantly higher throughput performance for data services than the IEEE 802.11 MAC algorithm and more advanced dynamic tuning backoff (DTB) algorithm. We demonstrate that this algorithm indeed resolves collisions faster and reduces the idle slots more effectively. To provide good fairness performance and to support good QoS for real-time traffic, we incorporate the self-clocked fair queueing algorithm and a priority scheme into the FCR algorithm and come up with the real-time FCR (RT-FCR) algorithm, and show that RT-FCR can simultaneously achieve high throughput and good fairness performance for nonreal-time traffic while maintaining satisfactory QoS support for real-time traffic.     

A Highly Reusable Code Assignment Approach with Modified Busy Tone Signaling for CDMA-Based Ad Hoc Networks

Medium access control (MAC) protocol is among the most active topics of research in ad hoc networks. With the CDMA-based MAC protocol the code allocation plays an important role and has significant impact on the protocol performance. In this paper, we propose a distributed CDMA code assignment protocol for the mobile ad hoc networks (MANETs). The protocol is mainly composed of (1) a modified busy tone signaling mechanism that protects on-going data transmission as well as distributes code usage information, and (2) a set of specially designed code selection rules that work by taking into consideration whether relevant nodes are in the transmitting or receiving state. By combining the two proposed schemes with the conventional request-to-send (RTS)/clear-to-send (CTS) dialogue and power control mechanism, our protocol is able to increase CDMA code reusability. The simulation results indicate that the proposed protocol indeed performs better than the static and dynamic code assignment methods (either with or without power control) in terms of successful transmission rate and successful code assignment rate. And instead of sending continuously, the proposed modified busy tone mechanism only issues busy tone signal in randomly selected cycles, which may save battery energy as compared to conventional busy tone implementations. Moreover, the proposed code selection rules and the modified busy tone signaling may also be integrated into existing MAC protocols, either separately or in combination.     

A novel pfmac protocol for wireless sensor network based on prediction and feedback method

In view of the problem that existing Media Access Control (MAC) protocols can not provide real-time monitor on network conditions, this paper puts forward a new MAC protocol??Predict and Feedback MAC (PFMAC) which can predict the channel??s congestion level reasonably. The dominant idea of the new scheme is to record the channel??s busy or idle situation in the backoff stage by sending Sensor Nodes (SNs), and according to the congestion level every SN can change the contention window adaptively when send packets successfully to minimize collisions, saving energy and channel resources. The result of simulation shows that compared with other MAC protocols, the PFMAC protocol can improve network throughput and reduce energy consumption in high speed network environment.     

Dual busy tone multiple access (DBTMA)-a multiple access controlscheme for ad hoc networks

In ad hoc networks, the hidden- and the exposed-terminal problems can severely reduce the network capacity on the MAC layer. To address these problems, the ready-to-send and clear-to-send (RTS/CTS) dialogue has been proposed in the literature. However, MAC schemes using only the RTS/CTS dialogue cannot completely solve the hidden and the exposed terminal problems, as pure "packet sensing" MAC schemes are not safe even in fully connected networks. We propose a new MAC protocol, termed the dual busy tone multiple access (DBTMA) scheme. The operation of the DBTMA protocol is based on the RTS packet and two narrow-bandwidth, out-of-band busy tones. With the use of the RTS packet and the receive busy tone, which is set up by the receiver, our scheme completely solves the hidden- and the exposed-terminal problems. The busy tone, which is set up by the transmitter, provides protection for the RTS packets, increasing the probability of successful RTS reception and, consequently, increasing the throughput. This paper outlines the operation rules of the DBTMA scheme and analyzes its performance. Simulation results are also provided to support the analytical results. It is concluded that the DBTMA protocol is superior to other schemes that rely on the RTS/CTS dialogue on a single channel or to those that rely on a single busy tone. As a point of reference, the DBTMA scheme out-performs FAMA-NCS by 20-40% in our simulations using the network topologies borrowed from the FAMA-NCS paper. In an ad hoc network with a large coverage area, DBTMA achieves performance gain of 140% over FAMA-NCS and performance gain of 20% over RI-BTMA     

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.     

Simulation and analysis of node throughput using smart antenna in wireless mesh networks

Smart antenna technology is introduced to wireless mesh networks. Smart antennas based wider-range access medium access control (MAC) protocol (SWAMP) is used as MAC protocol for IEEE 802.11 mesh networks in this study. The calculation method of node throughput in chain and arbitrary topology is proposed under nodes fairness guarantee. Network scale and interference among nodes are key factors that influence node throughput. Node distribution pattern near the gateway also affects the node throughput. Experiment based on network simulator-2 (NS-2) simulation platform compares node throughput between smart antenna scenario and omni-antenna scenario. As smart antenna technology reduces the bottle collision domain, node throughput increases observably.     

Signaling game approach to improve the MAC protocol in the underwater wireless sensor networks

Underwater sensor networks (UWSNs) are instructed for critical applications like military surveillance and underwater oil spills that conducted in a very massive three‐dimensional (3‐D) space that needs many underwater nodes (UNs) to cover the target area. Those UNs are not easy to recharge and cannot exploit solar power. MAC protocols deployed for UWSN ought to consider the energy efficiency, so as, to extend the network lifetime with total connectivity and significant throughput. Terrestrial MAC protocols could not be used for UWSN due to long and unpredictable propagation delay. Consequently, the development of a new MAC protocol for the harsh environment as underwater is a challenging task. In this study, we focus on the deployment of TDMA in UWSN for this, two schemes entitled TDMA slot sharing (TSS) and free time slots reallocation (FTSR) are proposed. Received data stored in the buffer waiting for processing and forwarding might lead to an unlimited data transfer latency those results in the buffer overflow. Otherwise, free time slots appearing during the communication process resulting from dead nodes increase uselessly sleep time for the rest of the nodes. Both schemes based on signaling game are proposed to overcome those problems, TSS is used to enable the slot sharing between UNs during the communication process to reduce the buffer overflow. FTSR scheme aims to increase the throughput of UNs by allowing the reuse of free time slots. Numerical results conducted in this work show good improvement in the network performance concerning throughput.     

A refined MAC protocol with multipacket reception for wireless networks

Medium access control (MAC) protocols making use of multipacket reception (MPR) capability achieve better throughput than conventional MAC protocols. When a wireless network operates with MPR capable nodes and non‐MPR nodes, the MAC protocols must not only utilise the MPR capability to maximise throughput, but must also enable the co‐existence with these two types of nodes. We propose a new MPR MAC protocol to achieve the co‐existence requirement by adopting a request‐to‐send (RTS)/clear‐to‐send (CTS) mechanism in IEEE 802.11 MAC standards. This MPR MAC protocol also improves throughput by allowing additional data transmissions to use the MPR capability fully. We analyse the system throughput of the co‐existence of different link characteristics of nodes, and optimise its throughput by adjusting contention window sizes with respect to certain throughput requirements of the nodes. Copyright © 2010 John Wiley & Sons, Ltd.     

A cross-layer scheme for medium access control with QoS guaranteeing for Ad hoc networks

1 Introduction medium access control (MAC) protocols play a crucial role in determining the performance of Ad hoc networks. However, the design of MAC protocols for Ad hoc networks has traditionally been separated from that of the physical layer. In most …     

流量自适应媒体访问控制协议的研究与设计

针对媒体访问控制(MAC)协议在无线传感器网络中的作用与要求,分析了典型的MAC协议,提出流量自适应改进方案,并用NS2对其进行了性能测试.仿真结果表明,在网络节点分布较为密集,突发数据流量变化较大的网络环境中,流量自适应MAC协议的能量效率、吞吐率和网络延迟都有较大的改善.     

RIPT: A Receiver-Initiated Reservation-Based Protocol for Underwater Acoustic Networks

Although there are many MAC protocols that have been proposed for terrestrial wireless networks with a wide variety of aspects, these protocols cannot be applied directly in underwater acoustic networks due to the channel's uniqueness of having low data rate and long propagation delay. In order to achieve a high throughput, both characteristics must be taken into account in the MAC design. We propose a random access MAC protocol for multi-hop underwater acoustic networks based on receiver reservation, which we shall call the "Receiverinitiated Packet Train" (RIPT) protocol. It is a handshakingbased protocol that addresses the channel?s long propagation delay characteristic by utilizing receiver-initiated reservations, as well as by coordinating packets from multiple neighboring nodes to arrive in a packet train manner at the receiver. Our simulation results have confirmed that the RIPT protocol can achieve our goal of having high and stable throughput performance while maintaining low collision rate.     

An Analysis of Generalized Slotted-Aloha Protocols

Aloha and its slotted variation are commonly deployed medium access control (MAC) protocols in environments where multiple transmitting devices compete for a medium, yet may have difficulty sensing each other's presence (the "hidden terminal problem'). Competing 802.11 gateways, as well as most modern digital cellular systems, like GSM, are examples. This paper models and evaluates the throughput that can be achieved in a system where nodes compete for bandwidth using a generalized version of slotted-Aloha protocols. The protocol is implemented as a two-state system, where the probability that a node transmits in a given slot depends on whether the node's prior transmission attempt was successful. Using Markov models, we evaluate the channel utilization and fairness of this class of protocols for a variety of node objectives, including maximizing aggregate throughput of the channel, each node selfishly maximizing its own throughput, and attacker nodes attempting to jam the channel. If all nodes are selfish and strategically attempt to maximize their own throughput, a situation similar to the traditional Prisoner's Dilemma arises. Our results reveal that under heavy loads, a greedy strategy reduces the utilization, and that attackers cannot do much better than attacking during randomly selected slots.     

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.     

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.     

Airtime Fairness for IEEE 802.11 Multirate Networks

Under a multirate network scenario, the IEEE 802.11 DCF MAC fails to provide airtime fairness for all competing stations since the protocol is designed for ensuring max-min throughput fairness. As such, the maximum achievable throughput by any station gets bounded by the slowest transmitting peer. In this paper, we present an analytical model to study the delay and throughput characteristics of such networks so that the rate anomaly problem of IEEE DCF multirate networks could be mitigated. We call our proposal time fair CSMA (TFCSMA) which utilizes an interesting baseline property for estimating a target throughput for each competing station so that its minimum contention window could be adjusted in a distributed manner. As opposed to the previous work in this area, TFCSMA is ideally suited for practical scenarios where stations frequently adapt their data rates to changing channel conditions. In addition, TFCSMA also accounts for packet errors due to the time varying properties of the wireless channel. We thoroughly compare the performance of our proposed protocol with IEEE 802.11 and other existing protocols under different network scenarios and traffic conditions. Our comprehensive simulations validate the efficacy of our method toward providing high throughput and time fair channel allocation.     

Sequential Coordination Function for Throughput and Fairness Enhancement of Wireless LANs

High throughput and fair resource sharing are two of the most important objectives in designing a medium access control (MAC) protocol. Currently, most MAC protocols including IEEE 802.11 DCF adopt a random access based approach in a distributed manner in order to coordinate the wireless channel accesses among competing stations. In this paper, we first identify that a random access?Cbased MAC protocol may suffer from MAC protocol overhead such as a random backoff for data transmission and a collision among simultaneously transmitting stations. Then, we propose a new MAC protocol, called sequential coordination function (SCF), which coordinates every station to send a data frame sequentially one after another in a distributed manner. By defining a service period and a joining period, the SCF eliminates unnecessary contentions during the service period, and by explicitly determining the sequence of frame transmission for each stations, it reduces collision occurrences and ensures fairness among stations in the service period. The performance of SCF is investigated through intensive simulations, which show that the SCF achieves higher throughput and fairness performances than other existing MAC protocols in a wide range of the traffic load and the number of stations.