A Protocol-Based Contention Window for MBOA MAC

In the early days of UWB development, IEEE802.15.3 MAC was a leading standard for UWB PHY, but now MBOA MAC has been considered as one of the most potential solutions for the medium access control (MAC) of the next generation of UWB PHY. Future home network may require that the MBOA MAC support a multi-protocol solution that will provide a mixed operation among PC, CE and mobile devices at the same time. Each device employs its own proper protocol. For example, AV devices for CE may use IEEE1394 protocol and mobile devices may use Bluetooth (BT) protocol. In order to support such multi-protocol environment effectively, the MBOA MAC needs to use a medium access method through a contention based on application protocol types. In this paper, we concentrate on defining a protocol-based contention window for a new medium access method. The values of protocol-based contention windows are determined by priority of application protocols.