A two-dimensional medium access control protocol based on OFDMA and CSMA/CA

Abstract

In this paper we present a two-dimensional medium access control (MAC) protocol. Orthogonal frequency division multiple access (OFDMA) can make multiple stations (STA) transmit simultaneously on different sub-channels. On the other hand, carrier sense multiple access with collision avoidance (CSMA/CA) could make different stations contend the available channel from the time domain to avoid collision with each other. We propose a two-dimensional MAC protocol based on OFDMA and CSMA/CA in broadband systems. With the new designed MAC protocol different stations will access the channel from the time-frequency domain without interference and collision. The combination of OFDMA with CSMA/CA will improve the system throughput with efficient MAC and decrease the collision probability. We design that different stations will contend the available time-frequency resources dynamically under fairness. The system throughput of the designed protocol is analyzed and simulation results are presented to show the performance under our designed protocol far better than the conventional CSMA/CA protocol.