Collision Resolution MAC Protocols for Wireless Ad Hoc Networks

In wireless ad hoc networks, nodes cooperatively form a network without any infrastructure such as a BS/AP (base station or access point). The widely-used contention-based MAC protocol, IEEE 802.11b, is inefficient in multi-hop networks due to the hidden and exposed terminal problems. The most popular schedule-based MAC protocol, TDMA (time division multiple access), is difficult to implement in an ad hoc network due to the lack of infrastructure. The contribution of this paper is to provide the community novel and efficient MAC (medium access control) protocols (i.e., a collision resolution protocol) for a wireless ad hoc network without a centralized infrastructure. We propose two new MAC protocols (one distributed algorithm and one cluster-based algorithm) that use a collision resolution scheme for a network with a single BS/AP. We first compare the performance of our distributed algorithm with our cluster-based algorithm. Then, we compare our algorithm that performs better (i.e., our cluster-based algorithm) to TDMA in a two-hop network. The simulation results illustrate that our cluster-based algorithm provides higher throughput and lower delay than TDMA in a two-hop network.