Throughput analysis of IEEE 802.15.4 beacon-enabled MAC protocol in the presence of hidden nodes

The presence of hidden nodes degrades the performance of wireless networks due to an excessive amount of data frame collisions. The IEEE 802.15.4 medium access control (MAC) protocol, which is widely used in current wireless sensor networks, does not provide any hidden node avoidance mechanisms and consequently could lead to severe performance degradation in networks with hidden nodes. This paper presents a simple technique based on discrete-time Markov chain analysis to approximate the throughput of IEEE 802.15.4 MAC protocol in the presence of hidden nodes. Using different network configurations, we validate the applicability of the proposed analysis for generic star-topology networks. Based on the analysis, the effects of network size, topology, frame length and frame arrival rate on the throughput of the system are investigated.     

Throughput and Delay Analysis of IEEE 802.11 DCF in the Presence of Hidden Nodes for Multi-hop Wireless Networks

Hidden node collision in a contention-based medium access control protocol contributes to poor wireless network performance. This paper extended the Bianchi’s study and introduces a mathematical model that can be used to calculate throughput and delay for the IEEE 802.11 distributed coordination function of a multihop wireless network infrastructure assuming the presence of hidden node collision. This research investigates three essential parameters of multi-hop wireless networks. More specifically, this paper aims to analyze the effect of hidden nodes, network size, and maximum backoff stage on the overall system throughput and packet delay. Results clearly reveal the effect of large wireless network size, maximum backoff stage, and collision probability on throughput and packet delay. On one hand, throughput does not depend on the maximum backoff stage (m) for a small network size (e.g., n \(=\) 10). On the other hand, throughput does not strongly depend on the number of nodes when the backoff stage values are high. Comparing our proposed model in case single-hop with the Bianchi model, the analysis results indicate that the throughput values in our model when the numbers of nodes are 10, 50, and 100 are 0.6031, 0.4172 and 0.3433 respectively; whereas the throughput values are respectively 0.8370, 0.8317 and 0.8255 at the same number of nodes for the Bianchi model. The difference can be attributed to several assumptions made in our proposed model that were not considered in the Bianchi model.     

Modeling of Collision Avoidance Protocols in Single-Channel Multihop Wireless Networks

Although there has been considerable work on the performance evaluation of collision avoidance schemes, most analytical work is confined to single-hop ad hoc networks or networks with very few hidden terminals. We present the first analytical model to derive the saturation throughput of collision avoidance protocols in multi-hop ad hoc networks with nodes randomly placed according to a two-dimensional Poisson distribution. We show that the sender-initiated collision-avoidance scheme achieves much higher throughput than the ideal carrier sense multiple access scheme with a separate channel for acknowledgments. More importantly, we show that the collision-avoidance scheme can accommodate much fewer competing nodes within a region in a network infested with hidden terminals than in a fully-connected network, if reasonable throughput is to be maintained. Simulations of the IEEE 802.11 MAC protocol and one of its variants validate the predictions made in the analysis. It is also shown that the IEEE 802.11 MAC protocol cannot ensure collision-free transmission of data packets and thus throughput can degrade well below what is predicted by the analysis of a correct collision avoidance protocol. Based on these results, a number of improvements are proposed for the IEEE 802.11 MAC protocol.     

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.     

A framework for post-disaster communication using wireless ad hoc networks

Disaster management system requires timely delivery of large volumes of accurate messages so that an appropriate decision can be made to minimize the severity. When a disaster strikes, most of the infrastructure for communication gets uprooted. As a result, communication gets hampered. A well designed Internet of things (IoT) can play a significant role in the post-disaster scenario to minimize the losses, and save the precious lives of animals and human beings. In this paper, we have proposed a framework for post-disaster communication using wireless ad hoc networks. The framework includes: (i) a multi-channel MAC protocol to improve the network throughput, (ii) an energy aware multi-path routing to overcome the higher energy depletion rate at nodes associated with single shortest path routing, and (iii) a distributed topology aware scheme to minimize the transmission power. Above proposals, taken together intend to increase the network throughput, reduce the end-to-end delay, and enhance the network lifetime of an ad hoc network deployed for disaster response. A multi-channel MAC protocol permits the transmission from hidden and exposed nodes without interfering with the on-going transmission. We have compared the proposed framework with an existing scheme called Distressnet [1]. Simulation results show that the proposed framework achieves higher throughput, lower end-to-end delay, and an increased network longevity.     

Transmitter-Oriented Code Assignment for Multihop Packet Radio

Quasi-orthogonal codes are assigned to transmitters in a packet radio network such that interference caused by hidden terminals is eliminated. In addition, a handshaking protocol permits random access between nodes. Simple mathematical models and simulation indicate a potential throughput advantage over slotted ALOHA and CSMA.     

A Multiaccess Protocol for Multihop Radio Networks

We describe an adaptive multiaccess channel protocol for use in radio networks with an arbitrary distribution of stationary hidden nodes, which provides the nodes with controlled, collision-free access to the channel. The protocol can be considered to belong to the BRAM [5] protocol family, but differs in significant ways from BRAM. In this paper we describe the tenets of the protocol, then develop the protocol, and finally develop analytic expressions for its expected throughput and delay performance. Given these delay-throughput expressions, we show how protocol "delay" optimization can be achieved by dynamic adjustment of a protocol parameter as the network traffic load changes.     

Performance Evaluation of Wireless Controller Area Network (WCAN) Using Token Frame Scheme

In this paper, a proposed new wireless protocol so-called wireless controller area network is introduced. WCAN is an adaptation of its wired cousin, controller area network protocol. The proposed WCAN uses token frame scheme in providing channel access to nodes in the system. This token frame method follows the example used in wireless token ring protocol which is a wireless network protocol that reduces the number of retransmissions as a result of collisions. This scheme based on CAN protocol allows nodes to share a common broadcast channel by taking turns in transmitting upon receiving the token frame that circulates around the network for a specified amount of time. The token frame allows nodes to access the network one at a time, giving ‘fair’ chance to all nodes instead of competing against one another. This method provides high throughput in a bounded latency environment. The proposed WCAN protocol has been developed and simulated by means of QualNet simulator. The performances of this proposed protocol are evaluated from the perspective of throughput, end-to-end delay and packet delivery ratio, and are compared against the IEEE 802.11 protocol. Simulation results show that the proposed WCAN outperforms IEEE 802.11 based protocol by 62.5 % in terms of throughput with increasing network size. Also, it shows an improvement of 6 % compared to IEEE 802.11 standard at a higher data interval rate.     

Throughput Analysis of IEEE802.11 Multi-Hop Ad Hoc Networks

In multi-hop ad hoc networks, stations may pump more traffic into the networks than can be supported, resulting in high packet-loss rate, re-routing instability and unfairness problems. This paper shows that controlling the offered load at the sources can eliminate these problems. To verify the simulation results, we set up a real 6-node multi-hop network. The experimental measurements confirm the existence of the optimal offered load. In addition, we provide an analysis to estimate the optimal offered load that maximizes the throughput of a multi-hop traffic flow. We believe this is a first paper in the literature to provide a quantitative analysis (as opposed to simulation) for the impact of hidden nodes and signal capture on sustainable throughput. The analysis is based on the observation that a large-scale 802.11 network with hidden nodes is a network in which the carrier-sensing capability breaks down partially. Its performance is therefore somewhere between that of a carrier-sensing network and that of an Aloha network. Indeed, our analytical closed-form solution has the appearance of the throughput equation of the Aloha network. Our approach allows one to identify whether the performance of an 802.11 network is hidden-node limited or spatial-reuse limited     

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.     

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.     

Application-layer multicasting with Delaunay triangulation overlays

Application-layer multicast supports group applications without the need for a network-layer multicast protocol. Here, applications arrange themselves in a logical overlay network and transfer data within the overlay. We present an application-layer multicast solution that uses a Delaunay triangulation as an overlay network topology. An advantage of using a Delaunay triangulation is that it allows each application to locally derive next-hop routing information without requiring a routing protocol in the overlay. A disadvantage of using a Delaunay triangulation is that the mapping of the overlay to the network topology at the network and data link layer may be suboptimal. We present a protocol, called Delaunay triangulation (DT protocol), which constructs Delaunay triangulation overlay networks. We present measurement experiments of the DT protocol for overlay networks with up to 10 000 members, that are running on a local PC cluster with 100 Linux PCs. The results show that the protocol stabilizes quickly, e.g., an overlay network with 10 000 nodes can be built in just over 30 s. The traffic measurements indicate that the average overhead of a node is only a few kilobits per second if the overlay network is in a steady state. Results of throughput experiments of multicast transmissions (using TCP unicast connections between neighbors in the overlay network) show an achievable throughput of approximately 15 Mb/s in an overlay with 100 nodes and 2 Mb/s in an overlay with 1000 nodes.     

A survey of MAC layer solutions to the hidden node problem in ad-hoc networks

Ad-hoc networks suffer from the problem of hidden nodes (terminals), which leads to severe degradation of network throughput. This survey gives a comprehensive overview of Medium Access Control (MAC) protocols which directly or indirectly address this problem. The presented protocols are grouped in several categories and are described in the order of their publication date. To give the reader a deep understanding of the progress made in the area of alleviating the hidden node problem a brief summary of the key ideas as well as a detailed comparison of different protocols are presented. Open research directions are also discussed to serve as a starting point for future protocol design and evaluation.     

Randomly Ranked Mini Slots for Fair and Efficient Medium Access Control in Ad Hoc Networks

Ad hoc networks offer infrastructure-free operation, where no entity can provide reliable coordination among nodes. Medium access Control (MAC) protocols in such a network must overcome the inherent unreliability of the network and provide high throughput and adequate fairness to the different flows of traffic. In this paper, we propose a MAC protocol that can achieve an excellent balance between throughput and fairness. Our protocol has two versions: randomly ranked mini slots (RRMS) utilizes control-message handshakes similar to IEEE 802.11. Randomly ranked mini slots with busy tone (RRMS-BT) is the better performer of the two, but requires a receiver busy tone. The protocol makes use of granule time slots and sequences of pseudorandom numbers to maximize spatial reuse and divide the throughput fairly among nodes. We demonstrate the performance of this protocol using simulation with fixed and random topologies and show that these results are robust to difficult network configurations and unsynchronized clocks. We further develop novel metrics of long-term and short-term fairness for rigorous performance evaluation. Our simulation results include a detailed comparison between the proposed protocol and existing protocols that have been shown to excel in terms of throughput or fairness     

Performance Analysis of Network Coding Based Two-Way Relay Wireless Networks Deploying IEEE 802.11

In this paper, we investigate the performance analysis of the IEEE 802.11 DCF protocol at the data link layer. We analyze the impact of network coding in saturated and non-saturated traffic conditions. The cross-layer analytical framework is presented in analyzing the performance of the encode-and-forward (EF) relaying wireless networks. This situation is employed at the physical layer under the conditions of non-saturated traffic and finite-length queue at the data link layer. First, a model of a two-hop EF relaying wireless channel is proposed as an equivalent extend multi-dimensional Markovian state transition model in queuing analysis. Then, the performance in terms of queuing delay, throughput and packet loss rate are derived. We provide closed-form expressions for the delay and throughput of two-hop unbalanced bidirectional traffic cases both with and without network coding. We consider the buffers on nodes are unsaturated. The analytical results are mainly derived by solving queuing systems for the buffer behavior at the relay node. To overcome the hidden node problem in multi hop wireless networks, we develop a useful mathematical model. Both models have been evaluated through simulations and simulation results show good agreement with the analytical results.     

A Low Duty Cycle MAC Protocol for Directional Wireless Sensor Networks

Directional communication in wireless sensor networks minimizes interference and thereby increases reliability and throughput of the network. Hence, directional wireless sensor networks (DWSNs) are fastly attracting the interests of researchers and industry experts around the globe. However, in DWSNs the conventional medium access control protocols face some new challenges including the synchronization among the nodes, directional hidden terminal and deafness problems, etc. For taking the advantages of spatial reusability and increased coverage from directional communications, a low duty cycle directional Medium Access control protocol for mobility based DWSNs, termed as DCD-MAC, is developed in this paper. To reduce energy consumption due to idle listening, duty cycling is extensively used in WSNs. In DCD-MAC, each pair of parent and child sensor nodes performs synchronization with each other before data communication. The nodes in the network schedule their time of data transmissions in such a way that the number of collisions occurred during transmissions from multiple nodes is minimized. The sensor nodes are kept active only when the nodes need to communicate with each other. The DCD-MAC exploits localized information of mobile nodes in a distributed manner and thus it gives weighted fair access of transmission slots to the nodes. As a final point, we have studied the performance of our proposed protocol through extensive simulations in NS-3 and the results show that the DCD-MAC gives better reliability, throughput, end-to-end delay, network lifetime and overhead comparing to the related directional MAC protocols.     

一种Ad Hoc网络隐藏终端问题的解决方案

介绍了存在于Ad Hoc网络中的隐藏和暴露终端问题,指出了解决问题的思路,并在双忙音的基础上提出了DBTMAC协议.仿真结果证明DBTMAC协议可以解决隐藏和暴露终端问题,提高网络的吞吐量,消除链路失效事件的发生.     

Extended sliding frame R-Aloha: Medium access control (MAC) protocol for mobile networks

Proliferation of mobile communication devices necessitates a reliable and efficient medium access control (MAC) protocol. In this paper, A MAC protocol, called extended sliding frame reservation Aloha (ESFRA), based on sliding frame R-Aloha (SFRA) is proposed for network access technique. ESFRA is particularly designed to solve the mobile hidden station (MHS) problem in a mobile ad hoc network (MANET) by including relative locations of transmitting stations in the packet frame information header. The MHS problem is unique in mobile networks and occurs if a mobile station enters in a collision free zone of any ongoing communication and disturbs this communication with its transmission. In addition to the MHS problem, ESFRA simultaneously solves hidden station, exposed station, and neighborhood capture problems typically observed in wireless networks. A Markov model of ESFRA is developed and provided here to estimate throughput, delay and collision probabilities of the proposed protocol. The Markov modeling is extended to the analysis of SFRA and IEEE 802.11 to compare these competing MAC protocols with ESFRA. The analysis shows that ESFRA decreases frame transmission delay, increases throughput, and reduces collision probabilities compared to IEEE 802.11 and SFRA. ESFRA improves the network throughput 28 percent compared to that of IEEE 802.11, and 33 percent compared to that of SFRA. The improved performance is obtained at the expense of the synchronization compared to IEEE 802.11, but there is virtually no extra cost compared to SFRA.     

无线传感器网络的分区异构分簇协议研究

针对无线传感器网络能量受限和路由协议中节点能量消耗不均衡的问题,提出一种新的无线传感器网络的分区异构分簇协议(PHC协议).该协议的核心是将3种不同能量等级的节点根据能量的不同分别部署在不同区域,能量较高的高级节点和中间节点使用聚类技术通过簇头直接传输数据到汇聚点,能量较低的普通节点则直接传输数据到汇聚点.仿真结果表明,该协议通过对节点合理的分配部署,使簇头分布均匀,更好地均衡了节点的能量消耗,延长了网络的稳定期,提高了网络的吞吐量,增强了网络的整体性能.     

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.