Transmission Sequence Design and Allocation for Wide-Area Ad Hoc Networks

In this paper, we examine the problem of designing and allocating transmission sequences to users in a mobile ad hoc network that has no spatial boundary. A basic tenet of the transmission sequence approach for addressing media access control (MAC) is that under normal operating conditions, there is no feedback-triggered retransmission. This obviously is a major departure from the Slotted-ALOHA or carrier-sense multiple-access (CSMA)-type approaches. While these traditional solutions enjoy excellent throughput performance, a fundamental drawback is that they are based on feedback information. For systems without a naturally defined central controller that can play the role of a base station, the task of providing feedback information could easily become unmanageable. This highlights the advantage of the feedback-free approach. A second advantage is the ability to handle unlimited spatial coverage. We propose in this paper a concept for MAC that is akin to frequency reuse. However, instead of reusing frequency, the new approach allows transmission sequences to be reused. A study of the transmission sequence approach against other approaches is conducted by comparing the minimal frame lengths that can guarantee the existence of conflict-free transmissions.