Dynamic future knowledge maximum transmission unit (DFK-MTU) for optic wireless networks

Abstract

Optic Wireless Networks (OWN) is the emerging field of interest because of its monumental bandwidth, energy efficiency, inherent security, low capital, and operating expenditure. Nevertheless, the OWN field is still in infancy and it is confronted with many challenges. Existing Medium Access Control (MAC) protocols do not take into consideration the physical properties of the OWN, hence they are deemed not suitable for OWN. The current Visible Light Communication (VLC) allows data transmission in contention and non-contention modes. The non-contention mode performs better in terms of packet loss and channel utilization. However, several issues such as Maximum Transmission Unit (MTU), and beacon duration need to be resolved in order to exploit potential benefits of non-contention mode. MTU size affects the performance of the network significantly. In this study, we present the Dynamic Future Knowledge Maximum Transmission Unit (DFK-MTU) algorithm for OWN. The proposed algorithm dynamically estimates the MTU size depending on the current content of the polling table and assigns each requesting node transmission slot by considering the requesting transmission size and the current MTU. Numerical results from our study show that the DFK-MTU enhances system utilization, and fairness.