Network Medium Access Control Protocols Research Articles

A CSMA/CA based MAC protocol for hybrid Power-line/Visible-light communication networks: Design and analysis

Hybrid Power-line/Visible-light Communication (HPVC) network has been one of the most promising Cooperative Communication (CC) technologies for constructing Smart Home due to its superior communication reliability and hardware efficiency. Current research on HPVC networks focuses on the performance analysis and optimization of the Physical (PHY) layer, where the Power Line Communication (PLC) component only serves as the backbone to provide power to light Emitting Diode (LED) devices. So designing a Media Access Control（MAC) protocol remains a great challenge because it allows both PLC and Visible Light Communication (VLC) components to operate data transmission, i.e., to achieve a true HPVC network CC. To solve this problem, we propose a new HPC network MAC protocol (HPVC MAC) based on Carrier Sense Multiple Access/Collision Avoidance (CSMA/CA) by combining IEEE 802.15.7 and IEEE 1901 standards. Firstly, we add an Additional Assistance (AA) layer to provide the channel selection strategies for sensor stations, so that they can complete data transmission on the selected channel via the specified CSMA/CA mechanism, respectively. Based on this, we give a detailed working principle of the HPVC MAC, followed by the construction of a joint analytical model for mathematical-mathematical validation of the HPVC MAC. In the modeling process, the impacts of PHY layer settings (including channel fading types and additive noise feature), CSMA/CA mechanisms of 802.15.7 and 1901, and practical configurations (such as traffic rate, transit buffer size) are comprehensively taken into consideration. Moreover, we prove the proposed analytical model has the solvability. Finally, through extensive simulations, we characterize the HPVC MAC performance under different system parameters and verify the correctness of the corresponding analytical model with an average error rate of 4.62% between the simulation and analytical results.

DCN-MAC: A Dynamic Channel Negotiation MAC Mechanism for Underwater Acoustic Sensor Networks.

In the design of media access control (MAC) mechanism in underwater acoustic sensor networks (UASNs), due to the propagation characteristic of low-speed underwater acoustic signals, it is necessary to solve the spatial–temporal uncertainty problem. In order to avoid the multi-user access conflict in underwater networks, reduce the energy cost and improve the throughput and fairness across the network, a dynamic channel negotiation MAC mechanism based on spatial–temporal mapping of receiving queue (DCN-MAC) was proposed. DCN-MAC uses a duty cycle mechanism and implements a network management based on dynamic single node wake-up. The awakening node collects the request to send (RTS) and network status information in the network to solve the problem of space-temporal uncertainty and the highly dynamic needs of network access nodes and access services. The simulation results show that in different network scenarios, especially in those featuring high density and heavy network load, compared with the traditional underwater acoustic network MAC protocols, this protocol can effectively improve the network throughput and reduce the packet loss probability caused by multi-node conflict.

Time division multiple access scheduling strategies for emerging vehicular ad hoc network medium access control protocols: a survey

Vehicular ad hoc network (VANET) is an emerging and promising technology, which allows vehicles while moving on the road to communicate and share resources. These resources are aimed at improving traffic safety and providing comfort to drivers and passengers. The resources use applications that have to meet high reliability and delay constraints. However, to implement these applications, VANET relies on medium access control (MAC) protocol. Many approaches have been proposed in the literature using time division multiple access (TDMA) scheme to enhance the efficiency of MAC protocol. Nevertheless, this technique has encountered some challenges including access and merging collisions due to inefficient time slot allocation strategy and hidden terminal problem. Despite several attempts to study this class of protocol, issues such as channel access and time slot scheduling strategy have not been given much attention. In this paper, we have relatively examined the most prominent TDMA MAC protocols which were proposed in the literature from 2010 to 2018. These protocols were classified based on scheduling strategy and the technique adopted. Also, we have comparatively analyzed them based on different parameters and performance metrics used. Finally, some open issues are presented for future deployment.

Research on Underwater Wireless Sensor Network and MAC Protocol and Location Algorithm

In recent years, underwater wireless sensor networks (UWSNs) have received extensive attention due to their application in the development of marine resources. The underwater acoustic channel has a long delay, low bandwidth, and highly dynamic changes in the underwater environment so that the existing technologies and protocols in the traditional wireless sensor network cannot be directly applied to underwater. This paper studies the medium access control (MAC) protocol and positioning technology of UWSNs and introduces the typical underwater line sensor network MAC protocol. Aiming at the problem of spatial fairness caused by the propagation characteristics of the underwater acoustic channel and the triple terminal problem caused by the long propagation delay in UWSNs, and effectively implementing the multi-channel mechanism, an underwater multi-channel based on a single transceiver is proposed, which is SFM-MAC. The existing underwater positioning algorithms are divided into two categories, centralized positioning algorithm and distributed positioning algorithm, and each type of algorithm is briefly explained. In this paper, the Markov chain is used to construct the reservation model of the control channel, and the theoretical analysis of multi-channel throughput is given. The theoretical throughput of the multi-channel MAC protocol under the condition of reserved collision is obtained. Finally, this paper verifies the actual performance of SFM-MAC through simulation experiments.

Wireless Body Area Networks MAC Protocol For Energy Efficiency and Extending Lifetime

Wireless body area networks (WBANs), as an important part of the Internet of things and sensor networks, are becoming more important in health monitoring and entertainment services. The sensor nodes in these applications need to transmit information data to personal station and receive control information from personal station to adjust working modes. However, unlike an easily rechargeable personal station, body sensor nodes suffer from energy shortages, which affect the nodes lifetimes. To solve this problem, we design a novel medium access control (MAC) layer protocol to enhance the energy efficiency and extend the lifetime of body sensor nodes in WBANs. The proposed protocol utilizes a hybrid scheme by taking advantage of carrier-sense multiple accesses with the collision avoidance and time division multiple access schemes. In addition, we allocate the main transmission overhead at the personal station side and design a novel awaiting order state for sensor nodes to improve energy efficiency. Also, the analysis and simulation results demonstrate that the proposed protocol can provide a 6 to 15 decrease in energy consumption from other protocols.

A lifetime-balancing MAC protocol under the end-to-end delay requirement

This article presents lifetime-balancing medium access control (LB-MAC), a new medium access control (MAC) protocol with embedded adaptivity for asynchronous, duty cycle sensor networks. Different from existing sensor network MAC protocols that usually focus on reducing energy consumption and extending lifetime of individual sensor nodes, LB-MAC aims at prolonging the network lifetime under a certain end-to-end delay requirement. It achieves this goal by dynamically tuning a comprehensive set ofMAC parameters. LB-MAC is a distributed, lightweight, and scalable solution, as the required control information is only exchanged locally between neighbors. LB-MAC has been implemented in TinyOS and evaluated on a sensor network testbed with extensive experiments. Results show that LB-MAC is able to yield a significantly longer network lifetime than state-of-the-art MAC protocols such as X-MAC, RI-MAC, and SEESAW, while meeting the end-to-end delay requirement, andmaintaining comparable levels of data delivery ratio and average nodal power consumption.

Performance optimization of duty‐cycled MAC in delay‐energy constrained sensor network under uniform and nonuniform traffic generation

SummaryDuty‐cycle at the media access control (MAC) layer plays a key role in energy savings and network lifetime extension. It consists in putting a node's radio in the sleep state as soon as it has no communication activity. Traditional wireless sensor network MAC protocols are designed with short duty‐cycles at the cost of long delays. Careful design is required for joint energy‐delay constrained applications, where the optimal parameters should be thoroughly derived. The present paper deals with this issue and mathematically derives optimal values of key MAC parameters under low data rate applications for 3 well‐known duty‐cycled MAC protocols, WiseMAC, SCP‐MAC, and LMAC as representatives of 3 MAC protocol categories, respectively, preamble‐sampling, slotted contention‐based, and frame‐based. The analysis provides also the optimum traffic sampling rate that guarantees the minimum energy consumption. It shows the role of these parameters in achieving the targeted end‐to‐end delay constraints under network models with uniform traffic generation, for ring and grid topologies. As a second contribution, the model is extended to nonuniform traffic scenarios, where a certain percentage of deployed nodes are relays whose role is to balance traffic forwarding and save the overall network energy. The results reveal that different optimal internal MAC parameters and traffic generation rates can be found for different configurations of relay nodes deployment, which achieve minimal network energy consumption while satisfying the application required end‐to‐end delay threshold.

Meta-survey on medium access control surveys in wireless sensor networks

Medium access control layer has been the hotbed of research in the field of wireless sensor networks since huge amount of research in wireless sensor networks has focused on saving energy and lately reducing latency. For the most part, medium access control layer solutions in wireless sensor networks are entrusted to save energy, to reduce latency, and at times to ensure reliability perhaps through cross-layer solutions. In this article, we review the surveys at medium access control layer and point to readers some of their strengths and relevancies to medium access control layer protocols. Furthermore, we classify the surveys subject-wise to show trend and usability. To cross compare, we devise a unified lexicon for the purpose and expose the coverage given to the wireless sensor networks’ medium access control protocols by different studies. We present medium access control solutions’ popularity on a known but hitherto unused metric: average citations/year from over 200 medium access control solutions. Our approach to assess the impact factor of protocols for ranking is validated prima facie from the coverage of these solutions by top ranking surveys. We believe it is the widest of such a study involving more than 30 survey papers and over 200 wireless sensor network medium access control protocols.

Queuing analysis of distributed and receiver‐oriented sensor networks: distributed DS‐CDMA‐based medium access control protocol for wireless sensor networks

The DRMACSN (distributed and receiver-oriented sensor networks) MAC (medium access control) protocol is a receiver-oriented protocol, which employs channel load sensing scheme to reduce the delay and the energy consumption in the network. This study presents the queuing analysis of the DRMACSN protocol for DS-CDMA-based wireless sensor networks. In this study, a discrete-time Geom/G/1 and M/G/1 multiple vacation queuing models that are used to model the behaviour of the DRMACSN MAC protocol are discussed. The study provides the results for the packet delay of the DRMACSN MAC protocol through simulations and the analysis. The results show that a reduced delay performance can be achieved by implementing the channel load blocking technique.

Busy tone contention protocol: a new high‐throughput and energy‐efficient wireless local area network medium access control protocol using busy tone

SUMMARYDesign of an efficient wireless medium access control (MAC) protocol is a challenging task due to the time‐varying characteristics of wireless communication channel and different delay requirements in diverse applications. To support variable number of active stations and varying network load conditions, random access MAC protocols are employed. Existing wireless local area network (WLAN) protocol (IEEE 802.11) is found to be inefficient at high data rates because of the overhead associated with the contention resolution mechanism employed. The new amendments of IEEE 802.11 that support multimedia traffic (IEEE 802.11e) are at the expense of reduced data traffic network efficiency. In this paper, we propose a random access MAC protocol called busy tone contention protocol (BTCP) that uses out‐of‐band signals for contention resolution in WLANs. A few variants of this protocol are also proposed to meet the challenges in WLAN environments and application requirements. The proposed BTCP isolate multimedia traffics from background data transmissions and gives high throughput irrespective of the number of contending stations in the network. As a result, in BTCP, admission control of multimedia flows becomes simple and well defined. Studies of the protocol, both analytically and through simulations under various network conditions, have shown to give better performance in comparison with the IEEE 802.11 distributed coordination function. Copyright © 2011 John Wiley & Sons, Ltd.

A MACA-based MAC protocol for Underwater Acoustic Sensor Networks

The medium access control (MAC) protocol design of underwater acoustic sensor networks (UWASNs) faces many challenges: the power limitation at nodes, long propagation delay, low data rates, etc. These challenges of underwater acoustic channels result in the unsuitable usage of terrestrial networks MAC protocol in UWASNs. Moreover, the long propagation delay causes a serious problem for the MAC protocol. In this paper, we propose a new MACA-based MAC protocol with delay tolerant (MACA-DT). It is shown that by using adaptive silent time and simultaneous handshake technique, MACA-DT protocol can improve the channel utilization and alleviate the long end-to-end delay. Simulation results show that our protocol can significantly improves the network throughput and decreases the end-to-end delay when compared with traditional MACA protocols.

Effects of Denial-of-Sleep Attacks on Wireless Sensor Network MAC Protocols

Wireless platforms are becoming less expensive and more powerful, enabling the promise of widespread use for everything from health monitoring to military sensing. Like other networks, sensor networks are vulnerable to malicious attack. However, the hardware simplicity of these devices makes defense mechanisms designed for traditional networks infeasible. This paper explores the denial-of-sleep attack, in which a sensor node's power supply is targeted. Attacks of this type can reduce the sensor lifetime from years to days and have a devastating impact on a sensor network. This paper classifies sensor network denial-of-sleep attacks in terms of an attacker's knowledge of the medium access control (MAC) layer protocol and ability to bypass authentication and encryption protocols. Attacks from each classification are then modeled to show the impacts on four sensor network MAC protocols, i.e., Sensor MAC (S-MAC), Timeout MAC (T-MAC), Berkeley MAC (B-MAC), and Gateway MAC (G-MAC). Implementations of selected attacks on S-MAC, T-MAC, and B-MAC are described and analyzed in detail to validate their effectiveness and analyze their efficiency. Our analysis shows that the most efficient attack on S-MAC can keep a cluster of nodes awake 100% of the time by an attacker that sleeps 99% of the time. Attacks on T-MAC can keep victims awake 100% of the time while the attacker sleeps 92% of the time. A framework for preventing denial-of-sleep attacks in sensor networks is also introduced. With full protocol knowledge and an ability to penetrate link-layer encryption, all wireless sensor network MAC protocols are susceptible to a full domination attack, which reduces the network lifetime to the minimum possible by maximizing the power consumption of the nodes' radio subsystem. Even without the ability to penetrate encryption, subtle attacks can be launched, which reduce the network lifetime by orders of magnitude. If sensor networks are to meet current expectations, they must be robust in the face of network attacks to include denial-of-sleep.

Introducing Discrete Information Theory Using Spreadsheets

Introducing Discrete Information Theory Using Spreadsheets Get access A. N. WISEMAN, A. N. WISEMAN Andrew Wiseman graduated in 1978 with a BA in mathematics from the University of Leeds. In 1982 he was awarded a PhD from the University of Sheffield. He then worked for four years in the Department of Engineering Mathematics, Loughborough University of Technology. This led to an interest in the use of computers in teaching mathematics, using packages and writing software. In 1985 he joined the Department of Mathematics and Physics at what is now the Manchester Metropolitan University, where he continues with this interest. His current research area is the performance analysis of local area network medium access control protocols. Address for correspondence : A. Wiseman, Department of Mathematics and Physics, the Manchester Metropolitan University, John Dalton Building, Chester Street, Manchester M1 5GD; P. Armstrong, Department of Mathematical Sciences, Loughborough University of Technology, Loughborough, Leicestershire LE11 3TU. Search for other works by this author on: Oxford Academic Google Scholar P. K. ARMSTRONG P. K. ARMSTRONG Peter Armstrong graduated with a BSc in physics from the University of Hull in 1962. He received a Certificate in Education from the University of Birmingham in 1963. In 1978 he was awarded the degree of MSc in mathematical education by Loughborough University and in 1990 he became a PhD of the same university, following research into the provision of in-service education for teachers of mathematics. He taught in further education for 16 years. In 1979 he was appointed as a Lecturer in Mathematical Education in the Department of Engineering Mathematics of Loughborough University, where his main work was in the Centre for Advancement of Mathematical Education in Technology (CAMET) as Academic Tutor of the All India Mathematics Education Project. He is currently course tutor of the MSc in mathematical education, and course tutor for mathematics of the BSc in mathematics and education in the Department of Mathematical Sciences, Loughborough University. Search for other works by this author on: Oxford Academic Google Scholar Teaching Mathematics and its Applications: An International Journal of the IMA, Volume 12, Issue 3, 1993, Pages 130–134, https://doi.org/10.1093/teamat/12.3.130 Published: 01 September 1993