利用智能天线实现多点中继功能的Ad Hoc网络MAC协议

在Ad Hoc网络中,采用多跳传输来提高数据传输的质量以及速率。传统的单中继节点已经不能适应迅速增大的数据量以及节点的移动造成的信道衰落情况,所以本文提出了基于智能天线实现多点中继的MAC协议,该协议采用了智能天线实现了菱形握手机制,使数据实现同步传输。其次采用空时编码的协作机制,通过估计源信号来防止中继节点与目的节点信道衰落的情况。最后利用Busy Tones解决了隐藏终端和暴露终端的问题。通过仿真与比较证明MRDMAC协议在数据延时和通过率等各个方面都有很大的优越性。     

Improved-throughput opportunistic transmission protocol for cooperative communication systems with a preferable-link switching combining

In this article, we propose an opportunistic transmission protocol for cooperative communication systems with L relay nodes under the influence of fading channels. Unlike the protocols previously known in the literature, and given the fact that direct single-link communication outperforms multilink cooperative communication in terms of throughput for same channel conditions, we adopt the channel conditions of the direct link as a main criterion to use whether the direct link in the transmission or the indirect cooperative link. Different performance metrics are derived to demonstrate the performance of the proposed protocol along with a switching combining with a preferable link scheme. These metrics include the bit error rate (BER), outage probability, signal to interference noise ratio (SNR) gain, average throughput and the sum SNR–throughput product (SSTP). The latter performance metric is introduced to compare the maximum achievable throughput as well as the SNR range at a given quality of service (QoS). Our results show that the proposed opportunistic protocol improves the throughput as compared to the conventional cooperative communication systems for the whole range of average SNR. On the other hand, it improves the coverage range as compared to the direct link communication.     

CoopMACA: a cooperative MAC protocol using packet aggregation

In this paper we propose a cooperative MAC protocol for Wireless Local Area Networks (WLAN) that involves the concept of cooperation among nodes to avoid the negative effect caused by multi rate modulation employed in IEEE 802.11 standards. In our proposed protocol a low data rate direct transmission link is replaced by two faster transmission links using a relay node. During transmission, each node selects either direct or indirect transmission (through a helper node) in order to minimize the total transmission time and utilizes the packet aggregation concept to improve the system throughput. The new protocol does not violate the inter frame space specified in IEEE 802.11 and shows compatibility with the standard. We give the mathematical analysis that shows that our proposed protocol increases the system throughput considerably in comparison to the existing ones. The analytical results are supported with the help of simulation. We have shown how this protocol can be implemented in combination with others to improve the system throughput in specific network scenarios.     

Relay-based cooperative MAC protocol with rate adaptation

The existing wireless cooperative MAC protocols rarely consider the impact of channel condition and node energy consumption.To this issue,a new wireless cooperative MAC protocol was proposed,which used the random linear network coding,and introduced a mechanism of request relay frame to solve the hidden terminal problem.Specifically,the proposed method adaptively adjusted the node rate according to RSSI,and determined the relay node based on the requirements of cooperative transmission.The simulation results show that the network performance can be improved through deploying the proposed protocol.     

一种改进的数据链协作MAC协议

针对基于TDMA（时分多址）的数据链网络协议在恶劣环境下时延大、业务突发性强等缺点,提出了一种改进的数据链协作MAC协议。在原有的协议中引入协作通信的思想,节点根据协作机制,利用自身时隙进行协作转发,并进一步加入中继优先权因子改进协作机制,中继节点根据节点的繁忙程度与信道条件来判定是否协作传输。通过对网络时延性能的研究与仿真,结果表明,改进后的协作协议性能优于传统的数据链协议。     

Improving energy efficiency of incremental relay based cooperative communications in wireless body area networks

In this paper, we investigate the energy efficiency of an incremental relay based cooperative communication scheme in wireless body area networks (WBANs). We derive analytical expressions for the energy efficiency of direct and cooperative communication schemes taking into account the effect of packet error rate. The following communication scenarios specific to a WBAN are considered: (i) in‐body communication between an implant sensor node and the gateway, and (ii) on‐body communication between a body surface node and the gateway with line‐of‐sight (LOS) and non‐LOS channels. The results reveal a threshold behavior that separates regions where direct transmission is better from regions where incremental relay cooperation is more useful in terms of energy efficiency. It is observed that, compared with direct communication, incremental relay based cooperative communication schemes improves the energy efficiency significantly. Further, cooperation extends the source‐to‐destination hop length over, which energy efficient communication can be achieved as compared with direct communication. We also observe that, for both direct as well as cooperative transmission schemes in error prone channels, an optimal packet size exists that result in maximum energy efficiency. Copyright © 2013 John Wiley & Sons, Ltd.     

Ad Hoc网络中一种具有优先控制的自适应协同MAC协议

ARQ(Auto Repeat reQuest)机制通常用来在传输失败后重传数据,但是在深衰落信道下,源节点多次重传有可能导致系统性能持续变坏,作为未来无线通信的重要技术,协同通信能够大大提高链路的可靠性,可以有效解决上述问题。本文针对Ad Hoc网络,提出了一种基于优先控制的自适应协同MAC(Media Access Control)协议。此协议采用ARQ机制,根据瞬时信道情况,自适应地选择信道质量更好的中继节点来重传数据,并且在优化的退避算法和中继选择算法的控制下,赋予中继节点相对源节点更高的优先级,协议中还在传统RTS/CTS分组交互基础上加入了新的握手交互机制,使得协议的性能进一步提升。本文还对经典二维Markov模型进行了改进,加入了协同机制并提出中继节点冲突模型,对所提协议进行了建模并推导出了吞吐量性能表达式。仿真结果表明,本文所提协议相对IEEE 80211 DCF协议和传统采用ARQ机制的协同MAC协议有着更好的性能。
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A reliable relay selection scheme for SSK modulation in cooperative communication systems

Space shift keying (SSK) modulation is a scheme in which the indices of active transmit antennas play an essential role in carrying information bits. In SSK modulation, the communication channel acts as modulating unit. Therefore, using the conventional relay selection schemes based on channel coefficients are impossible in cooperative systems using SSK modulation. In this paper, we propose a novel relay selection scheme that is applicable in cooperative systems using SSK modulation. The proposed scheme is based on calculating and measuring the Euclidean distances between received signal and all active or inactive channel coefficients. The proposed relay selection scheme is applied for a cooperative communication system with multiple relay nodes and a direct link between source and destination. The analytical expressions are derived to calculate the average bit error rate over Rayleigh fading channels. The analytical and simulation results show that this relay selection scheme can provide a full cooperative diversity order, for SSK modulation. In addition, we show that this scheme can be used at destination as a signal selection method, to select the best received signal from different paths. The analytical results are validated using Monte Carlo simulation studies.     

Cooperative relay to improve diversity in cognitive radio networks

Recent studies demonstrated that dynamic spectrum access can improve spectrum utilization significantly by allowing secondary unlicensed users to dynamically share the spectrum that is not used by the primary licensed users. Cognitive radio was proposed to promote the spectrum utilization by opportunistically exploiting the existence of spectrum ?holes.? Meanwhile, cooperative relay technology is regarded widely as a key technology for increasing transmission diversity gain in various types of wireless networks, including cognitive radio networks. In this article, we first give a brief overview of the envisioned applications of: cooperative relay technology to CRNs, cooperative transmission of primary traffic by secondary users, cooperative transmission between secondary nodes to improve spatial diversity, and cooperative relay between secondary nodes to improve spectrum diversity. As the latter is a new direction, in this article we focus on this scenario and investigate a simple wireless network, where a spectrum-rich node is selected as the relay node to improve the performance between the source and the destination. With the introduction of cooperative relay, many unique problems should be considered, especially the issue for relay selection and spectrum allocation. To demonstrate the feasibility and performance of cooperative relay for cognitive radio, a new MAC protocol was proposed and implemented in a universal software radio peripheral-based testbed. Experimental results show that the throughput of the whole system is greatly increased by exploiting the benefit of cooperative relay.     

Cooperative MAC Design in Multi-Hop Wireless Networks—Part II: When Source and Destination are Two-Hops Away from Each Other

Ubiquitous and pervasive computing and networking are envisaged as part of the future 5G wireless communication landscape where devices which are multi-hops away from each other are connected in a cooperative way. In this paper, we investigate a challenging case in cooperative communications where source and destination are two-hops away from each other. From the perspective of MAC design, we propose a novel MAC protocol which enables two-hop cooperative communications by involving one or more one-hop neighbors of both source and destination as the relays for cooperative communication. To do so, a concept referred to as Multiple Relay Points (MRPs) has been introduced and the MRPs are selected by jointly considering the link quality of both hops. In addition to employing a static scheme which always uses a fixed number of relays for cooperative communication, we have also proposed an adaptive scheme which can optimally adjust the number of relays flexibly according to channel conditions. Through performance evaluation and comparison with the original IEEE 802.11 based scheme, we demonstrate that more reliable communications, reduced transmission power and significant throughput improvement can be achieved by using our two-hop cooperative MAC protocol, especially when operated in the adaptive mode.     

rDCF: A Relay-Enabled Medium Access Control Protocol for Wireless Ad Hoc Networks

It is well known that IEEE 802.11 provides a physical layer multirate capability and, hence, MAC layer mechanisms are needed to exploit this capability. Several solutions have been proposed to achieve this goal. However, these solutions only consider how to exploit good channel quality for the direct link between the sender and the receiver. Since IEEE 802.11 supports multiple transmission rates in response to different channel conditions, data packets may be delivered faster through a relay node than through the direct link if the direct link has low quality and low rate. In this paper, we propose a novel MAC layer relay-enabled distributed coordination function (DCF) protocol, called rDCF, to further exploit the physical layer multirate capability. We design a protocol to assist the sender, the relay node, and the receiver to reach an agreement on which data rate to use and whether to transmit the data through a relay node. Considering various issues, such as, bandwidth utilization, channel errors, and security, we propose techniques to further improve the performance of rDCF. Simulation results show that rDCF can significantly reduce the packet delay, improve the system throughput, and alleviate the impact of channel errors on fairness.     

一种面向实时业务的Ad Hoc网络MAC协议

为降低AdHoe网络中实时业务的端到端时延,提出了基于802．11DCF的改进协议。协议采用3种机制降低实时业务的时延：面向路径的连续转发机制将RTS中的转发信息携带在ACK中发送,给实时业务提供较高的接入优先级;标签交换机制使得中间节点可以在MAC层获取转发信息,加快了实时业务数据包的转发速度;重传控制机制减少了无效传输的超时数据包。仿真结果表明,在重负载条件下,改进协议中实时业务的时延比802．11DCF有大幅度的下降,网络吞吐量也有所提高。     

基于双向中继和网络编码的NOMA网络性能分析

针对实际场景中存在的具有上下行双向传输任务的通信系统,本文提出了一种双向中继协作非正交多址接入(NOMA, non-orthogonal multiple access)传输方案,基于解码转发(DF, Decode and Forward)协议研究信号的上行和下行双向传输技术,与现有NOMA方案不同,本方案为近端用户分配较大的功率,利用网络编码(NC, network coding)原理在两个时隙内实现基站和用户之间的双向信息交换。进一步考虑不完美信道状态信息(CSI, Channel State Information)条件,分析系统的传输性能并推导了系统中断概率以及遍历和速率闭合表达式。仿真结果表明,在完美CSI和不完美CSI条件下,相比于现有文献所提方案、单向中继(OWR,One-Way Relay)和正交多址(OMA, Orthogonal Multiple Access)网络,本文所提方案有效降低了系统的传输中断概率,提高了系统的遍历和速率以及系统吞吐量。      

A cooperative multi-group priority MAC protocol for multi-packet reception channels

Medium access control (MAC) protocol design for cooperative networks over multi-packet reception (MPR) channels is a challenging topic, but has not been addressed in the literature yet. In this paper, we propose a cooperative multi-group priority (CMGP) based MAC protocol to exploit the cooperation diversity for throughput enhancement over MPR channels. The proposed approach can bypass the computationally-intensive active user identification process. Moreover, our method can efficiently utilize the idle periods for packet relaying, and can thus effectively limit the throughput loss resulting from the relay phase. By means of a Markov chain model, the worstcase throughput analysis is conducted. The results allow us to investigate the throughput performance of the proposed CMGP protocol directly in terms of the MPR channel coefficients. Simulation results confirm the system-wide throughput advantage achieved by the proposed scheme, and also validate the analytic results.     

Cooperative quadrature physical layer network coding in wireless relay networks

This paper proposes a cooperative quadrature physical layer network coding (CQPNC) scheme for a dual‐hop cooperative relay network, which consists of two source nodes, one relay node and one destination node. All nodes in the network have one antenna, and the two source nodes transmit their signals modulated with quadrature carriers. In this paper, a cooperative quadrature physical layer network coded decode‐and‐forward (DF) relay protocol (CQPNC‐DF) is proposed to transmit the composite information from the two source nodes via the relay node to the destination node simultaneously to reduce the number of time slots required for a transmission. The proposed CQPNC‐DF relay protocol is compared with time‐division multiple‐access amplify‐and‐forward (TDMA‐AF), TDMA‐DF, cooperative network coded DF (CNC‐DF) and cooperative analog network coded AF (CANC‐AF) relay protocols to demonstrate its effectiveness in terms of bit error rate (BER) and system throughput under different propagation conditions. The simulation results reveal that the proposed CQPNC‐DF relay protocol can significantly improve the network performance. Compared with two TDMA schemes and CNC‐DF, the proposal can provide up to 100% and 50% throughput gains, respectively. Moreover, no matter what the scene, the proposed scheme always has the lowest BER in the low SNR region. Copyright © 2013 John Wiley & Sons, Ltd.     

A Store-and-Forward Cooperative MAC for Wireless Ad Hoc Networks

Cooperative communications are widely used to increase the throughput of wireless networks. It is important to select the appropriate relay nodes to enhance the performance of cooperative communications. In wireless ad hoc networks, such as IEEE802.11 WLAN, the distributed MAC is used to share the wireless channel to different nodes. In this work, a simple store-and-forward cooperative MAC (SFC-MAC) is proposed, which is fully compatible with IEEE 802.11 MAC. In SSF-MAC, the relay node just stores the packets received from the sender and forward them to the receiver after it successfully contend the channel. Furthermore, an model is built to analyze the performance of relay methods in the ideal channel and imperfect channel. We utilize throughput performance as a metric to determine whether a relay node is selected. The analysis and simulation results show that the proposed simple SSF-MAC can increase the system throughput.     

Distributed cooperative MAC for multihop wireless networks

This article investigates distributed cooperative medium access control protocol design for multihop wireless networks. Cooperative communication has been proposed recently as an effective way to mitigate channel impairments. With cooperation, single-antenna mobile terminals in a multi-user environment share antennas from other mobiles to generate a virtual multipleantenna system that achieves more reliable communication with a higher diversity gain. However, more mobiles conscribed for one communication inevitably induces complex medium access interactions, especially in multihop wireless ad hoc networks. To improve the network throughput and diversity gain simultaneously, we investigate the issues and challenges in designing an efficient MAC scheme for such networks. Furthermore, based on the IEEE 802.11 DCF, a cross-layer designed cooperative MAC protocol is proposed. The MAC scheme adapts to the channel condition and payload length.     

Interference management schemes for multi‐user cooperative wireless networks

Cooperative communication is a promising technique for future wireless networks. It can be used in improving communication reliability and enhancing spectrum efficiency by using the broadcast nature of radio communication and exploiting cooperative diversity. However, its performance gain degrades in the presence of co‐channel interference, which makes it essential to propose interference mitigation schemes. In this paper, we introduce three cooperative communication schemes with interference management for multi‐user cooperative wireless networks. The first scheme (best relay selection) is used as a performance benchmark because it completely avoids the interference problem by using the Frequency‐Division Multiple Access technique. The second scheme (best available relay selection) maximizes the received signal‐to‐noise ratio while keeping the interference levels below a certain threshold, and the third scheme (General Order Relay and User Selection) is based on iterative resource allocation algorithm. We derive exact closed‐form expressions of average bit error probability, outage probability, and average consumed power for the proposed schemes. Simulations are used to validate the analytical results. The results confirm the advantage of the proposed cooperation schemes in enhancing the system performance and improving the interference management. Copyright © 2015 John Wiley & Sons, Ltd.     

Relay-volunteered multi-rate cooperative MAC protocol for IEEE 802.11 WLANs

In IEEE 802.11, the rate of a station (STA) is dynamically determined by link adaptation. Low-rate STAs tend to hog more channel time than high-rate STAs due to fair characteristics of carrier sense multiple access/collision avoidance, leading to overall throughput degradation. It can be improved by limiting the transmission opportunities of low-rate STAs by backoff parameters. This, however, may cause unfair transmission opportunities to low-rate STAs. In an attempt to increase overall throughput by volunteer high-rate relay STAs while maintaining fairness, we propose a new cooperative medium access control (MAC) protocol, relay-volunteered multi-rate cooperative MAC (RM-CMAC) based on ready to send/clear to send in multi-rate IEEE 802.11. In the RM-CMAC protocol, we show that the effect of hogging channel time by low-rate STAs can be remedied by controlling the initial backoff window size of low-rate STAs and the reduced transmission opportunity of low-rate STAs can be compensated by the help of volunteer high-rate relay STAs. We analyze the performance of RM-CMAC, i.e., throughput and MAC delay, by a multi-rate embedded Markov chain model. We demonstrate that our analysis is accurate and the RM-CMAC protocol enhances the network throughput and MAC delay while maintaining the fairness of low-rate STAs.     

太赫兹网络中基于中继协作转发的高效双信道MAC协议

针对现有多输入多输出(Multiple-Input Multiple-Output, MIMO)太赫兹通信网络双信道MAC协议存在波束重叠干扰和冗余控制开销等问题,提出了一种太赫兹网络中基于中继协作转发的双信道MAC协议(High Efficiency Dual channel MAC Protocol Based on Relay Cooperative Forwarding in Terahertz Networks, HE-RCFMAC)。HE-RCFMAC协议包含动态帧聚合、基于位置信息自适应协作转发和精简RTS(Request To Send)/CTS(Clear To Send)帧三种机制。经三种机制处理后,可有效提升信道利用率,同时减小控制开销,提高数据传输成功率和整体网络吞吐量。仿真结果表明,所提协议与现有的MIMO太赫兹双信道MAC协议相比,MAC层吞吐量、数据传输成功率和信道利用率分别提升了12.82%、12.28%和8.73%,证明了所提协议的有效性。