TRACE: time reservation using adaptive control for energy efficiency

Time reservation using adaptive control for energy efficiency (TRACE) is a time frame based media access control (MAC) protocol designed primarily for energy-efficient reliable real-time voice packet broadcasting in a peer-to-peer, single-hop infrastructureless radio network. Such networks have many application areas for various scenarios that obey a strongly connected group mobility model, such as interactive group trips, small military or security units, and mobile groups of hearing impaired people. TRACE is a centralized MAC protocol that separates contention and data transmission, providing high throughput, bounded delay, and stability under a wide range of data traffic. Furthermore, TRACE uses dynamic scheduling of data transmissions and data summarization prior to data transmission to achieve energy efficiency, which is crucial for battery operated lightweight radios. In addition, energy dissipation is evenly distributed among the nodes by switching network controllers when the energy from the current controller is lower than other nodes in the network, and reliability is achieved through automatic controller backup features. TRACE can support multiple levels of quality-of-service, and minimum bandwidth and maximum delay for voice packets are guaranteed to be within certain bounds. In this paper, we describe TRACE in detail and evaluate its performance through computer simulations and theoretical analysis.