RTS/FCTS mechanism based full-duplex MAC protocol for wireless networks

As an attractive and challenging transmission mode, the wireless full-duplex transmission can potentially double the system throughput if the self-interference can be efficiently cancelled or suppressed as compared with that of the wireless half-duplex transmission. Recently emerged advanced self-interference cancellation and suppression techniques have shown the possibility of avoiding the overwhelmed self-interference of the wireless full-duplex transmission. However, to achieve the double system throughput in wireless full-duplex networks, not only the efficient self-interference cancellation and suppression techniques in the physical-layer is necessary, but also the practical full-duplex medium access control (MAC) protocol is highly demanded in the datalink layer. In this paper, we propose a novel request to send (RTS)/full-duplex clear to send (FCTS) based MAC protocol which can support both bidirectional and unidirectionallinks in wireless full-duplex networks. Then, we develop the analytical model to characterize the performance of our proposed full-duplex MAC protocol in wireless full-duplex networks. Also conducted is a set of numerical evaluations showing that our proposed full-duplex MAC protocol can achieve superior system throughput as compared with that of the conventional half-duplex MAC protocol for wireless networks.