The IEEE 802.11 wireless local area network (WLAN) is the most widely deployed communication standard in the world. Currently, the IEEE 802.11ax draft standard is one of the most advanced and promising among future wireless network standards. However, the suggested uplink-OFDMA (UL-OFDMA) random access method, based on trigger frame-random access (TF-R) from task group ax (TGax), does not yet show satisfying system performance. To enhance the UL-OFDMA capability of the IEEE 802.11ax draft standard, we propose a centralized contention-based MAC (CC-MAC) and describe its detailed operation. In this paper, we analyze the performance of CC-MAC by solving the Markov chain model and evaluating BSS throughput compared to other methods, such as DCF and TF-R, by computer simulation. Our results show that CC-MAC is a scalable and efficient scheme for improving the system performance in a UL-OFDMA random access situation in IEEE 802.11ax.

Energy harvesting wireless sensor networks (EH-WSNs) are being actively studied in order to solve the problems faced by battery-operated WSNs, namely the cost for battery replacement and the negative impact on the environment. In EH-WSNs, each node harvests ambient energy, such as light, heat, vibration, and uses it for sensing, computations, and wireless communications, where the amount of harvested energy of each node varies depending on their environments. MAC protocols for EH-WSNs need to be designed to achieve high throughput and fairness, however, the conventional MAC protocols proposed for EH-WSNs do not adapt to the harvesting rate of each node, resulting in poor fairness. In this paper, we propose a fair MAC protocol based on polling scheme for EH-WSNs. The proposed scheme adjusts contention probability of each node according to its harvesting rate, thereby increasing the throughput of nodes with low harvesting rate. We evaluate throughput and fairness of the proposed fair polling scheme by theoretical analysis and computer simulations, and show that the proposed scheme can improve fairness with little degradation of the overall network throughput.

The IEEE 802.11 wireless LAN (WLAN) is based on carrier sense multiple access with collision avoidance (CSMA/CA) protocol. CSMA/CA uses a backoff mechanism to avoid collisions among stations (STAs). One disadvantage of backoff mechanisms is that STAs must wait for some period of time before transmission, which degrades spectral efficiency. Moreover, a backoff algorithm cannot completely avoid collisions. We have proposed a novel medium access control (MAC) scheme called the visual recognition-based medium access control (VRMAC) scheme, which uses an LED-camera communication technique. STAs send media-access request messages by blinking their LEDs in VRMAC scheme. An access point (AP) receives the messages via its camera, and then allocates transmission opportunities to the STAs by transmitting control frames. Since the transmission rate of the LED-camera communication is lower than WLAN transmission, the delay of access requesting causes and it could decrease the system throughput of the VRMAC system based WLAN. We reveal the effect of the delay for TCP flows and propose enhanced access procedures to eliminate the effect of the delay. Our simulation results demonstrate that VRMAC scheme increases the system throughput in UDP and TCP traffic. Moreover, the scenario-based evaluations reveal that VRMAC scheme also decreases the session delay which is a metric of quality of experience (QoE) for TCP applications.

Cognitive radio is one of the most promising wireless technologies and has been recognized as a new way to improve the spectral efficiency of wireless networks. In a cognitive radio network, secondary users exchange control information for network coordination such as transmitter-receiver handshakes, for sharing spectrum sensing results, for neighbor discovery, to maintain connectivity, and so on. Spectrum utilization and resource optimizations thus rely on information exchange among secondary users. Normally, secondary users exchange the control information via a predefined channel, called a common control channel (CCC). Most of the medium access control (MAC) protocols for cognitive radio networks were designed by assuming the existence of a CCC, and further assuming that it was available for every secondary user. However, the main drawback of using a static CCC is it is susceptible to primary user activities since the channel can be occupied by primary users at any time. In this paper, we propose a MAC protocol for cognitive radio networks with dynamic control channel assignment, called DYN-MAC. In DYN-MAC, a control channel is dynamically assigned based on spectrum availability. Thus, it can tolerate primary user activities. DYN-MAC also supports collision free network-wide broadcasting and addresses other major problems such as primary/secondary user hidden terminal problems.

Designing a medium access control (MAC) protocol is a key for implementing any practical wireless network. In general, a MAC protocol is responsible for coordinating users in accessing spectrum resources. Given that a user in cognitive radio(CR) networks do not have priority in accessing spectrum resources, MAC protocols have to perform dynamic spectrum access (DSA) functions, including spectrum sensing, spectrum access, spectrum allocation, spectrum sharing and spectrum mobility, beside conventional control procedure. As a result, designing MAC protocols for CR networks requires more complicated consideration than that needed for conventional/primary wireless network. In this paper, we focus on two major perspectives related to the design of a CR-MAC protocol: dynamic spectrum access functions and network infrastructure. Five DSA functions are reviewed from the point of view of MAC protocol design. In addition, some important factors related to the infrastructure of a CR network including network architecture, control channel management, the number of radios in the CR device and the number of transmission data channels are also discussed. The remaining challenges and open research issues are addressed for future research to aim at obtaining practical CR-MAC protocols.

Ultra-wideband (UWB) technology has attracted much attention recently due to its high data rate and low emission power. Its media access control (MAC) protocol, WiMedia MAC, promises a lot of facilities for high-speed and high-quality wireless communication. However, these benefits in turn involve a large amount of computational load, which challenges the traditional uniprocessor architecture based implementation method to provide the required performance. However, the constrained cost and power budget, on the other hand, makes using commercial multiprocessor solutions unrealistic. In this paper, a low-cost and energy-efficient multiprocessor system-on-chip (MPSoC), which tackles at once the aspects of system design, software migration and hardware architecture, is presented for the implementation of UWB MAC layer. Experimental results show that the proposed MPSoC, based on four simple RISC processors and shared-memory infrastructure, achieves up to 45% performance improvement and 65% power saving, but takes 15% less area than the uniprocessor implementation.

Light trail architecture is attracting attention as a new optical wavelength-division multiplexing network architecture that can be built with currently available devices and can achieve bandwidth allocation with granularity finer than a wavelength. Because a light trail is a shared medium, we need a medium access control (MAC) protocol to prevent collisions. Although MAC protocols using token passing can prevent collisions, the bandwidths of links that are located upstream of the token holding node are kept idle. We first propose a dynamic light trail splitting method for increasing throughput of a light trail by using such idle bandwidths. Our method splits a trail into upstream and downstream trails at the token holding node, and independent data transmission on the two trails are permitted. As a result, we expect that the split trail architecture will achieve higher throughput than the original non-split trail architecture. The degree of performance improvement with the split trail architecture depends on how appropriately we determine the upstream and downstream token holding times of every transmission node. Thus, we formulate a problem in which we optimize the token holding times to accommodate requested traffic volume as a linear programming problem. We then derive the throughput of the split trail architecture by solving the problem using the NUOPT solver and investigate the degree of improvement over the original architecture. In addition, we evaluate the end-to-end delay of the split trail architecture by simulation. According to numerical examples, the split trail architecture achieves 1) almost the same throughput as the original one for the worst-case traffic pattern where every transmission node sends data to the terminating node of the trail only, 2) about 1.6 times higher throughput for a uniform traffic pattern where every node pair requests the same traffic volume and an extremely unbalanced traffic pattern where only a few node pairs request huge traffic volume, 3) about 1.9 time higher throughput for the split trail architecture's good-case traffic pattern where every transmission node sends data to its adjacent downstream node only, and 4) the end-to-end delay enough to satisfy any application's QoS requirement according to ITU-T Recommendation Y.1541.

We propose an outband sensing-based IEEE 802.11h protocol without a full dynamic frequency selection (DFS) test. This scheme has two features. Firstly, every station performs a cooperative outband sensing, instead of inband sensing during a quiet period. And secondly, as soon as a current channel becomes bad, every station immediately hops to a good channel using the result of outband sensing. Simulation shows the proposed scheme increases network throughput against the legacy IEEE 802.11h.

In this paper, we propose an energy efficient MAC protocol for wireless sensor networks. In sensor networks, reducing energy consumption is one of the critical issues for extending network lifetime. One good solution to resolve this issue is introducing listen-sleep cycles, allowing sensor nodes to turn their transceiver off during sleep periods, which was adopted by S-MAC [1]. However, in S-MAC, due to the synchronized scheduling, transmission collisions will increase in heavy traffic situations, resulting in energy waste and low throughput. Hence, in this paper, we propose probabilistic scheduled MAC (PS-MAC), in which each node determines ‘listen’ or ‘sleep’ pseudo-randomly based on its own pre-wakeup probability and pre-wakeup probabilities of its neighbor nodes in each time slot. This allows the listen-sleep schedule of nodes in each transmitter and receiver pair to be synchronized, while maintaining those of the rest of nodes to be asynchronous. Therefore, collisions can be reduced even under heavy traffic conditions, resulting in reduced energy waste and high throughput. In addition, by dynamically adjusting the pre-wakeup probabilities of sensor nodes based on the change of the network environment, system throughput and latency can be further improved. Simulation results show that PS-MAC provides significant energy savings, low delay, and high network throughput.

We propose FuzzyCoop, a cooperative MAC layer protocol employing a fuzzy logic partner selection algorithm. The protocol is based on the Distributed Coordination Function (DCF) protocol used in the IEEE 802.11 standard. There are three inputs to the fuzzy system: the Signal to Noise Ratio (SNR), the error ratio between two neighbors and the time the most recent packet was received from a neighbor. The fuzzy output is the partnership probability of a neighboring terminal. Besides, we introduce a cooperation incentive to the stations by providing them with the right to transmit their own data without contention after a successful cooperation. The protocol is evaluated through extensive simulations in different scenarios and is compared to the DCF protocol and a previously proposed cooperative protocol. Simulation results show that FuzzyCoop improves the performances of a wireless network and provides a more robust partner selection scheme.

Utilizing available channels to improve the network performance is one of the most important targets for the cognitive MAC protocol design. Using antenna technologies is an efficient way to reach this target. Therefore, in this paper, we propose a novel cognitive MAC protocol, called Polarization-based Long-range Communication Directional MAC Protocol (PLRC-DMAC), for Cognitive Ad Hoc Networks (CAHNs). The proposed protocol uses directional antennas to acquire better spatial reuse and establish long-range communication links, which can support more nodes to access the same channel simultaneously. Moreover, the PLRC-DMAC also uses polarization diversity to allow nodes in the CAHN to share the same channel with Primary Users (PUs). Furthermore, we also propose a Long-range Orientation (LRO) algorithm to orient the long-range nodes. Simulation results show that the LRO algorithm can accurately orient the long-range nodes, and the PLRC-DMAC can significantly increase the network throughput as well as reduce the end-to-end delay.

We present an orthogonal frequency division multiple access (OFDMA) based multichannel slotted ALOHA for cognitive radio networks (OMSA-CR). The performance of an infinite population based OMSA-CR system is analyzed in terms of channel capacity, throughput, delay, and packet capture effect. We investigate the channel capacity for OMSA-CR with perfect or imperfect spectrum sensing. We introduce the proposed CR MAC based on two channel selection schemes: non-agile channel selection (NCS) and agile channel selection (ACS). Comparing them, we show the tradeoff between complexity and system performance. We verify the proposed CR system model using numerical analysis. In particular, using simulation with a finite populated linear feedback model, we observe the OMSA-CR MAC tradeoff between throughput and minimum delay whose results matched those of the analytical framework. Numerical results for the proposed system throughput are also compared to conventional MACs, including pure ALOHA based CR MAC.

In this letter, we propose a Throughput-aimed MAC Protocol with Quality of Service (QoS) provision (T-MAC) for cognitive Ad Hoc networks. This protocol operates based on the Time Division Multiple Access (TDMA) slot assignments and the power control mechanism, which can improve the QoS provision and network throughput. Our simulation results show that the T-MAC protocol can efficiently increase the network throughput and reduce the access delay.

With simultaneous multi-user transmissions, spatial division multiple access (SDMA) provides substantial throughput gain over the single user transmission. However, its implementation in WLANs with contention-based IEEE 802.11 MAC remains challenging. Problems such as coordinating and synchronizing the multiple users need to be solved in a distributed way. In this paper, we propose a distributed MAC protocol for WLANs with SDMA support. A dual-mode CTS responding mechanism is designed to accomplish the channel estimation and user synchronization required for SDMA. We analytically study the throughput performance of the proposed MAC, and dynamic parameter adjustment is designed to enhance the protocol efficiency. In addition, the proposed MAC protocol does not rely on specific physical layer realizations, and can work on legacy IEEE 802.11 equipment with slight software updates. Simulation results show that the proposed MAC outperforms IEEE 802.11 significantly, and that the dynamic parameter adjustment can effectively track the load variation in the network.

A simple distributed Medium Access Control (MAC) protocol for cognitive wireless networks is proposed. It is assumed that the network is slotted, the spectrum is divided into a number of channels, and the primary network statistical aggregate traffic model on each channel is given by independent Bernoulli random variables. The objective of the cognitive MAC is to maximize the exploitation of the channels idle time slots. The cognitive users can achieve this aim by appropriate hopping between the channels at each decision stage. The proposed protocol is based on the rule of least failures that is deployed by each user independently. Using this rule, at each decision stage, a channel with the least number of recorded collisions with the primary and other cognitive users is selected for exploitation. The performance of the proposed protocol for multiple cognitive users is investigated analytically and verified by simulation. It is shown that as the number of users increases the user decision under this protocol comes close to the optimum decision to maximize its own utilization. In addition, to improve opportunity utilization in the case of a large number of cognitive users, an extension to the proposed MAC protocol is presented and evaluated by simulation.

In this paper, we propose an adaptive power controlled MAC protocol with a traffic-aware scheme specifically designed to reduce both energy and latency in wireless sensor networks. Typically, existing MAC protocols for sensor networks sacrifice latency performance for node energy efficiency. However, some sensor applications for emergencies require rather fast transmissions of sensed data, where we need to consider both energy and latency together. The proposed MAC protocol includes two novel ideas: one is a transmission power control scheme for improving latency in high traffic loads, and the other is a traffic-aware scheme to save more energy in low traffic loads. The transmission power control scheme increases channel utilization by mitigating interference between nodes, and the traffic-aware scheme allows nodes to sleep to reduce idle energy consumption when there are no traffic loads in a network. Simulation results show that the proposed protocol significantly reduces the latency as well as the energy consumption compared to the S-MAC protocol specifically for a large transmission power of nodes and low network traffic.

This paper presents an efficient time slot assignment algorithm for a wireless sensor and actor network (WSAN), which consists of stationary sensors for detecting events and mobile actors for performing tasks. TDMA protocols are suitable for WSAN due to time-critical tasks, which are assigned to actors. In order to improve the performance of TDMA protocol, a time slot assignment algorithm should generate not only efficient TDMA scheduling but also reduce periodic run-time overhead. The proposed algorithm offers O(δ2) run-time in the worst case, where δ is the maximum number of one-hop and two-hop neighbors in the network. The average run-time in simulation results is far less than O(δ2), however, while the maximum number of assigned slots is bounded by O(δ). In order to reduce the run-time further, we introduce two fundamental processes in the distributed slot assignment and design the algorithm to optimize these processes. We also present an analysis and verify it using ns-2 simulations. Although the algorithm requires time synchronization and prior knowledge of two-hop neighbors, simulation results show that it reduces the run-time significantly and has good scalability in dense networks.

We use the network utility maximization (NUM) framework to create an efficient and fair medium access control (MAC) protocol for wireless networks. By adjusting the parameters in the utility objective functions of NUM problems, we control the tradeoff between efficiency and fairness of radio resource allocation through a rigorous and systematic design. In this paper, we propose a scheduling-based MAC protocol. Since it provides an upper-bound on the achievable performance, it establishes the optimality benchmarks for comparison with other algorithms in related work.

Much research has shown that a carefully designed auto rate medium access control can utilize the underlying physical multi-rate capability to exploit the time-variation of the channel. In this paper, we develop a simple analytical model to elucidate the rule that maximizes the throughput of RTS/CTS based multi-rate wireless local area networks. Based on the discovered rule, we propose two distributed fair auto rate medium access control schemes called FARM and FARM+ from the viewpoint of throughput fairness and time-share fairness, respectively. With the proposed schemes, after receiving a RTS frame, the receiver selectively returns the CTS frame to inform the transmitter the maximum feasible rate probed by the signal-to-noise ratio of the received RTS frame. The key feature of the proposed schemes is that they are capable of maintaining throughput/time-share fairness in asymmetric situation where the distribution of SNR varies with stations. Extensive simulation results show that the proposed schemes outperform the existing throughput/time-share fair auto rate schemes in time-varying channel conditions.

In this paper, we consider a network of N identical IEEE 802.11 DCF (Distributed Coordination Function) terminals with RTS/CTS mechanism, each of which is assumed to be saturated. For performance analysis, we propose a simple and efficient mathematical model to derive the statistical characteristics of the network such as the inter-transmission time of packets in the network and the service time (the inter-transmission time of successful packet transmissions) of the network. Numerical results and simulations are provided to validate the accuracy of our model and to study the performance of the IEEE 802.11 DCF network.