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 short-term fair MAC protocol for WLANs

Designing a medium access control (MAC) protocol that simultaneously provides high throughput and allows individual users to share limited spectrum resources fairly, especially in the short-term time horizon, is a challenging problem for wireless LANs. In this paper, we propose an efficient cooperative MAC protocol with very simple state information that considers only collisions, like the standard IEEE 802.11 MAC protocol. However, contrary to the IEEE 802.11 MAC, the cooperative MAC gives collided users priority to access the channel by assigning them shorter backoff counters and interframe-spaces than users who did not participate in the collision event. In other words, collided users are the only ones allowed to transmit in the following contention period. For the cooperative MAC protocol, we utilize an analytical throughput model to obtain the optimal parameter settings. Simulation results show that the cooperative MAC provides significant improvement in short-term fairness and access delay, while still providing high network throughput.     

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.     

Improving Spatial Reuse in Multihop Wireless Networks - A Survey

In multihop wireless ad-hoc networks, the medium access control (MAC) protocol plays a key role in coordinating the access to the shared medium among wireless nodes. Currently, the distributed coordination function (DCF) of the IEEE 802.11 is the dominant MAC protocol for both wireless LANs and wireless multihop ad hoc environment due to its simple implementation and distributed nature. The current access method of the IEEE 802.11 does not make efficient use of the shared channel due to its conservative approach in assessing the level of interference; this in turn affects the spatial reuse of the limited radio resources and highly affect the achieved throughput of a multihop wireless network. This paper surveys various methods that have been proposed in order to enhance the channel utilization by improving the spatial reuse.     

Load-aware channel hopping protocol design for mobile ad hoc networks

Using multiple channels in wireless networks improves spatial reuse and reduces collision probability and thus enhances network throughput. Designing a multi-channel MAC protocol is challenging because multi-channel-specific issues such as channel assignment, the multi-channel hidden terminal problem, and the missing receiver problem, must be solved. Most existing multi-channel MAC protocols suffer from either higher hardware cost or poor throughput. Some channel hopping multi-channel protocols achieve pretty good performance in certain situations but fail to adjust their channel hopping mechanisms according to varied traffic loads. In this paper, we propose a load-aware channel hopping MAC protocol (LACH) that solves all the multi-channel-specific problems mentioned above.LACH enables nodes to dynamically adjust their schedules based on their traffic loads. In addition to load awareness, LACH has several other attractive features: (1) Each node is equipped with a single half-duplex transceiver. (2) Each node’s initial hopping sequence is generated by its ID. Knowing the neighbor nodes’ IDs, a node can calculate its neighbors’ initial channel hopping sequences without control packet exchanges. (3) Nodes can be evenly distributed among available channels. Through performance analysis, simulations, and real system implementation, we verify that LACH is a promising protocol suitable for a network with time-varied traffic loads.     

GRAPO—optimized group randomly addressed polling for wireless data network

This paper presents a MAC (medium access control) layer protocol GRAPO (optimized group randomly addressed polling) for wireless (local area) data network. GRAPO statistically optimizes the original version of GRAP proposed earlier [6, 7, 9] to deliver smooth converging and better throughput/delay performance. It is a good candidate of MAC protocol for wireless LANs and other wireless network applications to serve time bounded services.     

A reservation-based multicast protocol for WDM optical star networks

In this paper, we present a reservation-based medium access control (MAC) protocol with multicast support for wavelength-division multiplexing networks. Our system is based on the single-hop, passive optical star architecture. Of the available wavelengths (channels), one channel is designated as a control channel, and the remaining channels are used for data transmission. Each node is equipped with a pair of fixed transceiver to access the control channel, and a fixed transmitter and a tunable receiver to access data channels. For easy implementation of the protocol in hardware and for precisely computing the protocol's processing overhead, we give a register-transfer model of the protocol. We simulate the protocol to study its throughput behavior, and present its analytic model. For a node to be able to send data packets in successive data slots with no time gap between them, in spite of the situation that the protocol's execution time may be longer than data transmission time, we propose the idea of multiple MAC units at each node. Unicast throughput of our protocol reaches the theoretically possible maximum throughput for MAC protocols with distributed control, and the multicast throughput is at least as good as, and even better than, those delivered by existing MAC protocols with distributed control.     

Throughput Enhancement Through Dynamic Fragmentation in Wireless LANs

Many rate-adaptive MAC protocols have been proposed in the past for wireless local area networks (LANs) to enhance the throughput based on channel information. Most of these protocols are receiver based and employ the RTS/CTS collision avoidance handshake specified in the IEEE 802.11 standard. However, these protocols have not considered the possibility of bursty transmission of fragments in the corresponding rate adaptation schemes. In this article, a rate-adaptive protocol with dynamic fragmentation is proposed to enhance the throughput based on fragment transmission bursts and channel information. Instead of using one fragmentation threshold in the IEEE 802.11 standard, we propose to use multiple thresholds for different data rates so more data can be transmitted at higher data rates when the channel is good. In our proposed scheme, whenever the rate for the next transmission is chosen based on the channel information from the previous fragment transmission, a new fragment is then generated using the fragment threshold for the new rate. In this way, the channel condition can be more effectively used to squeeze more bits into the medium. We evaluate this scheme under a time-correlated fading channel model and show that the proposed scheme achieves much higher throughput than other rate-adaptive protocols.     

Exploiting the channel using uninterrupted collision‐free MAC adaptation over IEEE 802.11 WLANs

IEEE 802.11 wireless local area networks (WLANs) have reached an important stage and become a common technology for wireless access due to its low cost, ease of deployment, and mobility support. In parallel with the extensive growth of WLANs, the development of an efficient medium access control protocol that provides both high throughput performance for data traffic and quality of service support for real‐time applications has become a major focus in WLAN research. The IEEE 802.11 Distributed Coordination Functions (DCF/EDCA) provide contention‐based distributed channel access mechanisms for stations to share the wireless medium. However, performance of these mechanisms may drop dramatically because of high collision probabilities as the number of active stations increases. In this paper, we propose an adaptive collision‐free MAC adaptation. The proposed scheme prevents collisions and allows stations to enter the collision‐free state regardless of the traffic load (saturated or unsaturated) and the number of stations on the medium. Simulation results show that the proposed scheme dramatically enhances the overall throughput and supports quality of service for real‐time services over 802.11‐based WLANs. Copyright © 2013 John Wiley & Sons, Ltd.     

A High-Throughput MAC Protocol for Wireless Ad Hoc Networks

One way to improve the throughput of a wireless ad hoc network at the media access (MAC) layer is to allow as much as possible concurrent transmissions among neighboring nodes. In this paper, we present a novel high-throughput MAC protocol, called Concurrent Transmission MAC(CTMAC), which supports concurrent transmission while allowing the network to have a simple design with a single channel, single transceiver, and single transmission power architecture. CTMAC inserts additional control gap between the transmission of control packets (RTS/CTS) and data packets (DATA/ACK), which allows a series of RTS/CTS exchanges to take place between the nodes in the vicinity of the transmitting or receiving node to schedule possible multiple, concurrent data transmissions. To safeguard the concurrent data transmission, collision avoidance information is included in the control packets and used by the neighboring nodes to determine whether they should begin their transmissions. Also, to isolate the possible interference between DATA packets and ACK packets, a new ACK sequence mechanism is proposed. Simulation results show that a significant gain in throughput can be obtained by the CTMAC protocol compared with the existing work including the IEEE 802.11 MAC protocol.     

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.     

ATM infrared wireless LANs: a proposed architecture

As infrared wireless LANs for in-building applications become more popular because of their many advantages, it is of interest to design such LANs to support the ATM protocol and therefore provide wireless access to fixed ATM networks. The architecture of such a LAN is presented in this article. Emphasis is placed on the protocol stacks of the model to provide seamless operation with the wired network, on the cellular topology, and on the MAC protocol. Under the proposed topology the system performance is revealed in terms of packet dropping probability, average access delay, channel throughput, and statistical multiplexing gain for a range of system parameters     

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.

     

60 GHz broadband MAC system design for cable replacement in machine vision applications

In this paper, we present a wireless 60 GHz OFDM transceiver for a high-throughput GigE Vision standard compliant color CCD camera system used in machine vision applications. The OFDM transceiver provides net data rates up to 3.9 Gb/s. The medium access controller (MAC) offers the reliable GigE point-to-point cable replacement functionality with special support of an asymmetrical downlink scenario. The main focus is on the high throughput MAC design for frame based wireless transmissions and the integration onto a hardware platform. The OFDM baseband processor and the MAC were fully implemented in FPGA technology. The performance of the system was theoretically analyzed and measured in an indoor environment. The developed system fulfills the high throughput requirement as well as the low latency requirement of the used industrial HD video camera system.     

A Beacon-Based Collision-Free Channel Access Scheme for IEEE 802.11 WLANs

In IEEE 802.11 based WLAN standard, distributed coordination function is the fundamental medium access control (MAC) technique. It employs a CSMA/CA with random binary exponential backoff algorithm and provides contention-based distributed channel access for stations to share the wireless medium. However, performance of this mechanism drops dramatically due to random structure of the backoff process, high collision probability and frame errors. That is why development of an efficient MAC protocol, providing both high throughput for data traffic and quality of service (QoS) support for real-time applications, has become a major focus in WLAN research. In this paper, we propose an adaptive beacon-based collision-free MAC adaptation. The proposed scheme makes use of beacon frames sent periodically by access point, lets stations enter the collision-free state and reduces the number of idle slots regardless of the number of stations and their traffic load (saturated or unsaturated) on the medium. Simulation results indicate that the proposed scheme dramatically enhances the overall throughput and supports QoS by reducing the delay, delay variation and dropping probability of frames.     

An OFDM-TDMA/SA MAC Protocol with QoS Constraints for Broadband Wireless LANs

Orthogonal frequency division multiplexing (OFDM) is an important technique to support high speed transmission of broadband traffic in wireless networks, especially broadband wireless local area networks (LANs). Based on OFDM, a new multiple access scheme, called OFDM-TDMA with subcarrier allocation (OFDM-TDMA/SA), is proposed in this paper. It provides more flexibility in resource allocation than other multiple access schemes such as OFDM-TDMA, OFDM-frequency division multiple access (OFDM-FDMA), and orthogonal frequency division multiple access (OFDMA). With OFDM-TDMA/SA, a medium access control (MAC) is designed for broadband wireless LANs. It optimizes bit allocation in subcarriers so that maximum bits are transmitted in each OFDM symbol under a frequency selective fading environment. The OFDM-TDMA/SA MAC protocol also supports three classes of traffic such as guaranteed, controlled-load, and best effort services. Based on the optimum subcarrier bit-allocation algorithm and considering heterogeneous QoS constraints of multimedia traffic, a hierarchical scheduling scheme is proposed to determine the subcarriers and time slots in which a mobile terminal can transmit packets. In such a way, the OFDM-TDMA/SA MAC protocol significantly increases system throughput in a frequency selective fading environment and guarantees QoS of multimedia traffic. Computer simulation is carried out to evaluate the performance of the OFDM-TDMA/SA MAC protocol. Results show that the new MAC protocol outperforms other MAC protocols for OFDM-based wireless LANs. This work was supported by the State of Georgia Yamacraw Project (E21-105).     

Carrier‐sense‐assisted adaptive learning MAC protocols for distributed wireless LANs

A Carrier‐sense‐assisted adaptive learning MAC protocol for wireless LANs, capable of operating efficiently in bursty traffic wireless networks with unreliable channel feedback, is introduced. According to the proposed protocol, the mobile station that is granted permission to transmit is selected by means of learning automata. At each station, the learning automaton takes into account the network feedback information in order to update the choice probability of each mobile station. The proposed protocol utilizes carrier sensing in order to reduce the collisions that are caused by different decisions at the various mobile stations due to the unreliable channel feedback. Simulation results show satisfactory performance of the proposed protocol compared to similar MAC protocols. Copyright © 2005 John Wiley & Sons, Ltd.     

A prediction-based asynchronous MAC protocol for heavy traffic load in wireless sensor networks

Radio transceiver often consumes most of energy in a sensor node. To achieve low power consumption, every node periodically schedules its radio transceiver into sleep or active state, which is usually called duty cycle mechanism in MAC protocol. In this paper, we design a novel Prediction-Based Asynchronous MAC protocol (PBA-MAC) for heavy traffic load in wireless sensor networks. PBA-MAC applies an efficient wakeup mechanism to save the energy of a sensor node as much as possible. It reduces communication cost by enabling a sender to predict the intended receiver’s wakeup time, without introducing unnecessary idle listening or overhearing cost. In addition, it introduces an exponential advance mechanism to handle the prediction error caused by clock drift and hardware platform latency. More importantly, its backcast-based retransmission characteristic can efficiently resolve severe wireless collisions caused by concurrent traffic flows. The PBA-MAC is implemented in Contiki operating system. We compare PBA-MAC to some existing energy-efficient MAC protocols. The experimental results show that PBA-MAC significantly improves network energy efficiency and reduces packet delivery latency even under heavy traffic load.     

无线数据通信网中的信道接入协议研究

信道接入协议（MAC）是无线数据通信协议的重要组成部分。由于无线信道是一个开放、共享的信道，网络节点在通信过程中存在隐终端和暴露终端问题。基于目前无线通信常用的MAC协议存在的问题，着重分析了基于扩频码的信道接入协议，该协议利用扩频码的正变特性，使得网络中各节点可以同时占用信道而互不干扰，较好地解决了信道争用问题，提高了系统效率。同时指出，在选择MAC协议时，应根据无线网络的拓扑结构及特点灵活选择，以提高网络性能。