Data flushing data transfer protocol for IEEE 802.11 ad hoc wireless network

Abstract

We present a data flushing data transfer (DFDT) protocol for IEEE 802.11 wireless ad hoc network. The basic mechanism of DFDT is quite the same as the distributed coordination function (DCF) of the medium access control (MAC) of IEEE 802.11, which uses a random access delay backoff time after a busy medium condition and RTS/CTS dialogue before sending actual payload data (direct data/ACK could also be used). The enhancement introduced by DFDT is mainly produced by the compilation process (CP), which fits as many MAC layer packets as possible into one physical layer packet within the limit of a predetermined length. By using the CP, we lower the protocol overhead, the packet arrival rate of the physical layer, and network contention all with one action. DFDT takes the advantages of the RTS/CTS mechanism but has less the overhead. Simulation results backed by numerical analysis show growing improvement in performance, limited by the saturation of the network, as the network load gets higher.