Full-duplex MAC protocol using buffer status reports during unused uplink periods in WLAN

Abstract

Full-duplex radio is a promising technique for next-generation wireless local area networks, because it can greatly increase the throughput by transmitting and receiving signals simultaneously within the same frequency band. Since conventional medium access control (MAC) protocols have been designed for half-duplex radio, they are not suitable for full-duplex radio. Therefore, we propose a novel MAC protocol to fully utilize full-duplex radio. The proposed MAC protocol consists of two periods: contention and scheduling. In the contention period, stations compete for channel access and report their buffer status information (BSI) and hidden stations to the access point (AP). Then, in the scheduling period, the AP provides transmission opportunities to stations without contention. One of the salient features of the proposed MAC protocol is that it utilizes unused uplink periods. Consequently, stations can report their BSI and hidden stations to the AP without time overhead. To evaluate the performance of the proposed MAC protocol, we performed an analytical evaluation and simulations. The evaluation results show that the proposed MAC protocol outperforms existing full-duplex MAC protocols.