VTBM - a novel distributed MAC approach for wireless networks

The recently emerging possibility of ubiquitous wireless connectivity has increased the importance of the effective radio bandwidth usage. In the case of distributed multiple access MAC algorithms are needed to lower the probability of collisions [S. Kumar et al., 2005]. In our paper we investigated a dynamic p-persistent algorithm [R. Bruno et al., 2002]-[R. Bruno et al., Dec 2000] based CSMA/CA procedure for distributed wireless networks. A novel distributed medium access procedure that aims to increase the efficiency of the radio bandwidth usage is presented. The proposed VTBM (virtual transmission based MAC) procedure is based on our analytical results which are presented in this paper. VTBM uses a virtual transmission mechanism [A Veres et al., Oct 2001] to get information about the network configuration and estimate the optimum transmission pattern for the active mobile nodes. The performance of our MAC solution is investigated by simulations. Specifically, the effects of different population of active terminals on performance are investigated. Simulation results demonstrate that the proposed algorithm outperforms the exponential backoff [F. Cali et al., Dec 2000] algorithm used in 802.11 DCF MAC ([S. Kumar et al., 2005], [A.C.V. Gummalla and J.O. Limb, 2000], [F. Cali et al., De3c 2000]) regarding throughput.