A New MAC Protocol of Ad Hoc Networks

In traditional ad hoc networks, the hidden-terminal and the exposed-terminal problems can reduce the network capacity severely on the MAC layer. To address the problem, many MAC schemes have been proposed such as RTS/CTS dialogue and DBTMA protocol. Among these protocols, the DBTMA protocol has solved the hidden- and the exposed- terminal problems perfectly. However, the DBTMA protocol occupies two separate busy tone channels to address the hidden- and the exposed-terminal problems, and therefore causes a waste of channel. In this paper, we propose a new MAC protocol, termed the combined dual busy tone multiple access (CDBTMA). In our proposed CDBTMA protocol, the DBTMA protocol is modified, using only one busy tone channel to implement all functions which the DBTMA protocol has, without significant loss on performance.