An Integrated Cluster-Based Multi-Channel MAC Protocol for Mobile Ad Hoc Networks

This paper proposes a novel joint clustering and multi-channel medium access control (MAC) protocol for mobile ad hoc networks, based on a scalable two-phase coding scheme. It employs the first-phase codes for differentiating the clusters and the second-phase codes for distinguishing the nodes in a specific cluster. The proposed protocol effectively integrates the procedure of code assignment with dynamic clustering and henceforth substantially reduces the control overhead of code assignment in a code division multiple access (CDMA) based multi-channel MAC protocol while simultaneously combating the hidden terminal problem. Furthermore, the confliction detection and resolution mechanism for the allocation of the first-phase codes as well as the collision avoidance mechanism for the allocation of the second-phase codes in the control channel are also introduced. Analytical framework and extensive simulation results, in terms of control overhead and delay, are provided and compared to the traditional distributed CDMA based multichannel MAC algorithms with or without clustering.     

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.     

Two-phase coding multichannel MAC protocol with MAI mitigation for mobile ad hoc networks

This letter introduces a novel multichannel medium access control (MAC) protocol for mobile ad hoc networks (MANETs) based on a scalable two-phase coding scheme, which eliminates the hidden terminal problem (HTP) without exchange of neighborhood information. Furthermore, power control is incorporated to mitigate multiple-access interference (MAI). Simulation results show that significant improvement can be achieved by the proposed protocol over IEEE 802.11 DCF.     

Multi-channel support for DMAC in WSNs

Currently most wireless sensor network applications assume the presence of single-channel medium access control (MAC) protocols. However, lower sensing range result in dense networks, single-channel MAC protocols may be inadequate due to higher demand for the limited bandwidth. In this paper we proposed a method of multi-channel support for DMAC in Wireless sensor networks (WSNs). The channel assignment method is based on local information of nodes. Our multi-channel DMAC protocol implement channel distribution before message collecting from source nodes to sink node and made broadcasting possible in DMAC. Analysis and simulation result displays this multi-channel protocol obviously decreases the latency without increasing energy consumption.     

A survey and qualitative analysis of mac protocols for vehicular ad hoc networks

In order to avoid transmission collisions in mobile ad hoc networks (MANETs), a reliable and efficient medium access control (MAC) protocol is needed. Vehicular MANETs (VANETs) have vehicles as network nodes and their main characteristics are high mobility and speed. Active safety applications for VANETs need to establish reliable communications with minimal transmission collisions. Only few MAC protocols designed for MANETs can be adapted to efficiently work in VANETs. In this article we provide a short overview on some MANET MAC protocols, and then we summarize and qualitatively compare the ones suited for VANETs     

A hybrid reservation-based MAC protocol for underwater acoustic sensor networks

Due to the characteristics of underwater acoustic channel, such as long propagation delay and low available bandwidth, media access control (MAC) protocol designed for the underwater acoustic sensor network (UWASN) is quite different from that for the terrestrial wireless sensor network. However, for the contention-based MAC protocols, the packet transmission time is long because of the long preamble in real acoustic modems, which increase the packet collisions. And the competition phase lasts for long time when many nodes are competing for the channel to access. For the schedule-based MAC protocols, the delay is too long, especially in a UWASN with low traffic load. In order to resolve these problems, a hybrid reservation-based MAC (HRMAC) protocol is proposed for UWASNs in this paper. In the proposed HRMAC protocol, the nodes reserve the channel by declaring and spectrum spreading technology is used to reduce the collision of the control packets. Many nodes with data packets to be transmitted can reserve the channel simultaneously, and nodes with reserved channel transmit their data in a given order. The performance analysis shows that the proposed HRMAC protocol can improve the channel efficiency greatly. Simulation results also show that the proposed HRMAC protocol achieves better performance, namely higher network throughput, lower packet drop ratio, smaller end-to-end delay, less overhead of control packets and lower energy overhead, compared to existing typical MAC protocols for the UWASNs.     

Energy efficient TDMA-based MAC protocol associated with GAF for wireless sensor networks

The design of media access control (MAC) protocol for wireless sensor networks (WSNs) with the idea of cross layer attracts more and more attention. People can improve the MAC protocol by obtaining certain information regarding the network layer and physical layer. This article synthesizes and optimizes certain cross-layer protocols which have existed. On the basis of the routing, topology information in the network layer, and transmission power information in the physical layer, the time slot assignment algorithm has been improved in the MAC layer. By using geographical adaptive fidelity algorithm (GAF) to divide the grids, controlling of transmission power and scheduling the work/sleep duty cycle for sensor nodes, a new MAC protocol has been proposed to decrease energy consumption and enlarge the lifetime of WSNs. Simulation results show that the MAC protocol functions well.     

Joint Design of Routing and Medium Access Control for Hybrid Mobile Ad Hoc Networks

Efficient routing and medium access control (MAC) are very important for Mobile Ad hoc Networks (MANETs). Most existing routing and MAC protocols consider homogeneous ad hoc networks, in which all nodes are modeled as the same, i.e., they have the same communication capabilities and characteristics. Although a homogeneous network model is simple and easy to analyze, it misses important characteristics of many realistic MANETs such as military battlefield ad hoc networks. In addition, a homogeneous ad hoc network suffers from poor performance and scalability. In many ad hoc networks, multiple types of nodes do co-exist; and some nodes have larger transmission power, higher transmission data rate, and better processing capability, are more reliable and robust than other nodes. Hence, a hybrid network model is more realistic and provides many advantages for designing better routing and MAC protocols. In this paper, we present a new routing protocol called Hybrid Routing, which is specifically designed for hybrid MANETs. In addition, a novel MAC protocol is jointly designed for hybrid MANETs. Extensive simulations demonstrate that the proposed routing MAC protocols have very good performance.

移动AdHoc网络的单信道媒体接入协议

AdHoc网络中的信道接入是一个比较复杂的问题，单信道接入协议是目前AdHoc网络中应用最广泛的，介绍了AdHoc网络中MAC协议需要解决的主要问题和设计要求，并列举分析了几种典型的基于CSMA／CA的由原端发起的单信道接入协议。最后总结了在MAC协议中常用的退避算法：二进制退避算法（BEB）和倍数增线性减算法（MILD），指出其中存在的问题。     

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.     

EAOMDV-MIMC: A Multipath Routing Protocol for Multi-Interface Multi-Channel Mobile Ad-Hoc Networks

Multipath routing has been proposed to improve performance of mobile ad-hoc networks (MANETs). However, due to: (1) nodes lacking of network interface and (2) route coupling, using multiple paths concurrently in conventional single channel MANETs rarely exhibit performance gain. To improve performance, an ad-hoc routing protocol (and its extension) that utilizes multiple homogeneous network interface is proposed in this paper. Unlike other related multi-channel routing protocols, channels are not assigned. Instead, nodes are allowed to make use of all available channels they are tuned to. In the base protocol, nodes estimate channel conditions by monitoring their network interface queues and distribute data packets to different channels and next-hops according to their conditions. In the extended protocol, estimated channel condition at a node is further propagated to neighboring nodes by piggybacking channel condition information in data packets. With overhearing, other nodes can retrieve this information to make better next-hop selections. Extensive simulation studies show that our protocol outperforms other related multi-channel routing protocols.     

移动AdHoc网络的单信道媒体接入协议

AdHoc网络中的信道接入是一个比较复杂的问题,单信道接入协议是目前AdHoc网络中应用最广泛的,本文介绍了AdHoc网络中MAC协议需要解决的主要问题和设计要求,并列举分析了几种典型的基于CSMA/CA的由原端发起的单信道接入协议。最后总结了在MAC协议中常用的退避算法:二进制退避算法(BEB)和倍数增线性减算法(MILD),指出其中存在的问题。     

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.     

Distributed Sequential Access MAC Protocol for Single-Hop Wireless Networks

Medium access control overhead is the primary reason for low throughput in wireless networks. Performing blind contentions, contentions without any information of other contenders, and exchanging control message are time-consuming control operations. In this study, we propose a new MAC protocol called distributed sequential access MAC (DSA-MAC) which provides the transmission order without any explicit control operations. It may induce very light control overhead; therefore, compared to existing wireless MAC protocols, DSA-MAC can remarkably enhance network throughput.     

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.     

无线传感网混合类MAC协议研究综述

在无线传感网( WSN)体系结构中,介质访问控制( MAC)协议负责调配网络中节点的信道接入,具有保障网络高效通信的重要作用。混合类MAC 协议综合了竞争类MAC 协议以及调度类MAC协议的特点,在融合两种机制的优点的同时克服其缺点,为无线信道资源的分配提供了更加灵活和全面的策略。首先概述了无线传感网MAC协议设计要点及分类,然后重点分析了无线传感网中经典的混合类MAC协议及国内外前沿的研究进展,并进一步归纳对比了各协议运行机制、性能及不足,得出混合类MAC协议的应用相关性及差异性的结论,最后总结了无线传感网混合类MAC协议研究现状并指出了未来的研究重点,以期为相关领域的研究人员提供参考。     

一种高效低时延的宽带电力线通信网多跳MAC协议

针对IEEE1901.1宽带电力线通信媒体接入控制(Medium Access Control,MAC)协议涉及到信标时隙利用不充分和控制开销过大等问题,提出了一种高效低时延的宽带电力线通信网多跳MAC协议(Efficient and Low Delay Multi-hop MAC,ELDM-MAC).采用基于节点层级号的信标时隙分配机制,根据邻居表和时隙分配信息计算能够提前进入到载波监听多路访问时隙(Carrier Sense Multiple Access,CSMA)的时间,减少了信标时隙的浪费,提高了信道利用率;同时采用基于拓扑信息的信标帧高效广播机制,删除不大于自身层级号的节点和大于且在两跳范围内的非子孙节点的时隙分配信息,降低了网络控制开销.仿真结果表明,ELDM-MAC协议在信道利用率、平均时延和控制开销等方面都优于IEEE1901.1 MAC协议,更适用于宽带电力线通信网络的实际应用场景.     

Energy efficient multi-channel media access control for dense wireless ad hoc and sensor networks

Traditional single-channel MAC protocols for wireless ad hoc and sensor networks favor energy-efficiency over throughput. More recent multi-channel MAC protocols display higher throughput but less energy efficiency. In this article we propose NAMAC, a negotiator-based multi-channel MAC protocol in which specially designated nodes called negotiators maintain the sleeping and communication schedules of nodes within their communication ranges in static wireless ad hoc and sensor networks. Negotiators facilitate the assignation of channels and coordination of communications windows, thus allowing individual nodes to sleep and save energy. We formally define the problem of finding the optimal set of negotiators (i.e., minimizing the number of selected negotiators while maximizing the coverage of the negotiators) and prove that the problem is NP-Complete. Accordingly, we propose a greedy negotiator-election algorithm as part of NAMAC. In addition, we prove the correctness of NAMAC through a rigorous model checking and analyze various characteristics of NAMAC—the throughput of NAMAC, impact of negotiators on network capacity, and storage and computational overhead. Simulation results show that NAMAC, at high network loads, consumes 36 % less energy while providing 25 % more throughput than comparable state-of-art multi-channel MAC protocols for ad hoc networks. Additionally, we propose a lightweight version of NAMAC and show that it outperforms (55 % higher throughput with 36 % less energy) state-of-art MAC protocols for wireless sensor networks.     

Design and analysis of a denial-of-service-resistant quality-of-service signaling protocol for MANETs

Quality-of-service (QoS) signaling protocols for mobile ad hoc networks (MANETs) are highly vulnerable to attacks. In particular, a class of denial-of-service (DoS) attacks can severely cripple network performance with relatively little effort expended by the attacker. A distributed QoS signaling protocol that is resistant to a class of DoS attacks on signaling is proposed. The signaling protocol provides QoS for real-time traffic and employs mechanisms at the medium access control (MAC) layer, which serve to avoid potential attacks on network resource usage. The key MAC layer mechanisms that provide support for the QoS signaling scheme include sensing of available bandwidth, traffic policing, and rate monitoring, all of which are performed in a distributed manner by the mobile nodes. The proposed signaling scheme achieves a compromise between signaling protocols that require the maintenance of per-flow state and those that are completely stateless. The signaling scheme scales gracefully in terms of the number of nodes and/or traffic flows in the MANET. The authors analyze the security properties of the protocol and present simulation results to demonstrate its resistance to DoS attacks.     

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.