Specification of a collision-free CSMA MAC protocol for wireless LANs: The CANlike protocol

Collision-free Medium Access Control (MAC) protocols based on Carrier Sense Multiple Access (CSMA) and priorities associated to the frames are interesting solutions in considering real-time traffic in a wireless context. We have already presented such a protocol using priorities represented by the BlackBurst technique. The goal of this paper is, at first and mainly, to specify another such protocol, named CANlike, which is an adaptation of the wired CAN bus protocol to the wireless context, and then to show its interest for the implementation of process control applications through a wireless network.