FIDC: a fair MAC protocol for ad hoc wireless networks

The carrier sense multiple access/ID countdown (CSMA/IC) is an emerging MAC protocol, designed for multi-hop ad hoc wireless networks, that differs from CSMA/CA. CSMA/IC is based on the binary countdown technique and, thus, fairness is commonly regarded at a disadvantage in this kind of MAC protocol. We propose the fair ID countdown (FIDC) scheme that only inserts one additional slot to the original protocol as an effective solution for the fairness problem. To prevent further nodal starvation in multi-hop environments, we also propose starvation-prevented FIDC. We show that our FIDC protocols can result in perfect fairness, without reducing the achievable network throughput.