WTRP—Wireless Token Ring Protocol

Abstract

The wireless token ring protocol (WTRP) is a novel medium access control (MAC) protocol for wireless local area networks (WLANs). In contrast with IEEE 802.11 networks, WTRP guarantees quality of service (QoS) in terms of bounded latency and reserved bandwidth, which are critical in many real-time applications. Compared to 802.11, WTRP improves efficiency by reducing the number of retransmissions due to collisions, and it is more fair as all stations use the channel for the same amount of time. Stations take turns transmitting and give up the right to transmit after a specified amount of time. WTRP is a distributed protocol that supports many topologies, as not all stations need to be connected to each other or to a central station. WTRP is robust against single node failures, and recovers gracefully from multiple simultaneous faults. WTRP is suitable for interaccess point coordination in ITS DSRC, safety-critical vehicle-to-vehicle communications, and home networking, and provides extensions to other networks and Mobile IP.