NICE - A decentralized medium access control using neighborhood information classification and estimation for multimedia applications in ad hoc 802.11 wireless LANs

Abstract

The desired properties of a medium access control (MAC) protocol in mobile ad hoc network (MANET) include (1) meet quality of service (QoS) requirements for real-time nodes, (2) be decentralized, (3) achieve fairness from viewpoint of throughput or energy consumption, and (4) be immune to the hidden node problem. Though there have been numerous proposed MAC protocols for the IEEE 802.11 WLAN, few of them possesses all of the above four properties. In this paper, we propose a new MAC scheme satisfying all of above four properties. Our protocol can support real-time traffic and satisfy QoS requirements, and can achieve fairness among non-real-time nodes. Also, without using any centralized control, it can be easily deployed in MANET. An analytic model of the protocol's throughput has also been developed. We compare the protocol's throughput obtained from its analytic model and simulation to validate each other.