The impact of transmission errors in MAC schemes for distributed wireless networks

The Medium Access Control (MAC) protocol design for distributed wireless networks has been a topic of extensive research in the last years. The protocol design challenge relies on the infra-structureless nature of distributed wireless networks, which difficult the implementation of optimal throughput MAC schemes. However, interesting optimal-based MAC protocols have been proposed in the last years, including protocols such as AOB, Idle Sense, as well as a MAC scheme that we have recently proposed. Contrarily to previous works, where the existing optimal-based protocols are evaluated considering an ideal physical layer without transmission errors, this paper evaluates the performance of these protocols when transmission errors are considered. The analysis compares a recent optimal MAC scheme proposed by our team (OMACP - Optimal MAC Protocol) with two other optimal-based protocols (Idle Sense and AOB), extending the evaluation to two heuristic-based solutions (IEEE 802.11 MAC and GDCF protocol). A comparison is made for the throughput, delay and fairness index achieved by each protocol. The results evidence higher performance for optimal-based protocols, highlighting the good performance of our recently proposed protocol.