Proposed Medium Access Control Protocol Research Articles

Load-adaptive MAC protocol for frontier detection in Underwater Mobile Sensor Network

This work proposes a load-adaptive Medium Access Control (MAC) protocol for the frontier/boundary detection application of underwater phenomena using Underwater Mobile Sensor Network (UWMSN). A leader-follower architecture of a swarm of underwater vehicles is proposed here. Autonomous Underwater Vehicles (AUVs) traverse a random mobility pattern beneath one Autonomous Surface Vehicle (ASV) (leader) in the proposed network. ASV has to guide multiple-follower AUVs in the event of interest. The vehicular swarm aims to explore the frontiers in the event to build the map. Load-adaptive MAC protocol is therefore proposed and implemented in this hybrid multi-vehicular network to ensure seamless vehicular communications. The ASV has navigational capabilities to aid the AUVs in navigation and data collection. The proposed MAC protocol can adjust the dynamic mobility and load in the network. The protocol aims to provide dynamic Time Division Multiple Access (TDMA) slots for the AUVs wirelessly linked in the vicinity of the ASV. These slots are used for ranging/navigation and data transmission. Additional urgent data from any AUVs can be transmitted in open Carrier Sense Multiple Access (CSMA) protocol following the TDMA duration. Results have been generated by comparing protocols like CSMA, ALOHA, and TDMA with the proposed Load-Adaptive MAC protocol. The protocols have been compared to the throughput vs number of nodes and throughput vs simulation time. It has been observed that the proposed MAC can perform better than ALOHA and CSMA protocols. Nevertheless, it can produce comparable results for TDMA protocol while supporting the dynamic mobility and load in the network meantime supporting urgent data transmission for nodes in demand.

“Hybrid MAC Methodology for Improving the QOS in Fiber Wireless Network”

The Fi-Wi (Fiber-Wireless) approach stands out as a crucial element in the realm of networks, demonstrating superiority over various technologies. With the exponential growth in Internet users, significant strides have been made in the evolution of Fi-Wi networking systems in recent years. This mechanism offers broader bandwidth and network stability, ensuring high-speed connectivity with "Anytime Anywhere" availability for end users. However, the escalating energy demand in networking systems poses a constraint on the network's lifespan, impacting transmission.
 Over the years, researchers have proposed and tested various Media Access Control (MAC) protocols to address transmission and energy consumption issues. Despite these efforts, existing protocols have encountered challenges such as overheating, delays, throughput issues, and collisions. This research paper introduces a combination of Time Division Multiple Access (TDMA) and Carrier Sense Multiple Access (CSMA) to tackle associated challenges. The primary objective is to enhance throughput and reduce delays in Fi-Wi networks.
 To achieve this goal, the study employs techniques that involve and Utilizing an Orthogonal Frequency Division Multiplexing (OFDM) modulator, a free-space optical (FSO) communication channel, an OFDM demodulator, and Opti-system for the analysis and enhancement of received signals, our study demonstrates that the proposed MAC protocol surpasses conventional MAC protocols in terms of delay, data throughput, and transmission efficiency.

“Hybrid MAC Methodology for Improving the Qos in Fiber Wireless Network”

The Fi-Wi (Fiber-Wireless) approach stands out as a crucial element in the realm of networks, demonstrating superiority over various technologies. With the exponential growth in Internet users, significant strides have been made in the evolution of Fi-Wi networking systems in recent years. This mechanism offers broader bandwidth and network stability, ensuring high-speed connectivity with "Anytime Anywhere" availability for end users. However, the escalating energy demand in networking systems poses a constraint on the network's lifespan, impacting transmission.
 Over the years, researchers have proposed and tested various Media Access Control (MAC) protocols to address transmission and energy consumption issues. Despite these efforts, existing protocols have encountered challenges such as overheating, delays, throughput issues, and collisions. This research paper introduces a combination of Time Division Multiple Access (TDMA) and Carrier Sense Multiple Access (CSMA) to tackle associated challenges. The primary objective is to enhance throughput and reduce delays in Fi-Wi networks.
 To achieve this goal, the study employs techniques that involve and Utilizing an Orthogonal Frequency Division Multiplexing (OFDM) modulator, a free-space optical (FSO) communication channel, an OFDM demodulator, and Opti-system for the analysis and enhancement of received signals, our study demonstrates that the proposed MAC protocol surpasses conventional MAC protocols in terms of delay, data throughput, and transmission efficiency.

Multi-round transmission and contention protocol in WLANs with multi-packet reception

Nowadays, there are many scenarios in Wi-Fi networks where many devices compete for network access via an Access Point to transmit their information. Thus, the ability to separate multiple packets sent simultaneously using advanced digital processing techniques in the physical layer, known as Multi-Packet Reception (MPR), has become crucial. As this feature may increase network throughput, medium access control (MAC) protocols that efficiently exploit the MPR capability have been investigated. This paper proposes a new MAC protocol that exploits the MPR capability in 802.11 RTS/CTS access mechanism networks. It is based on the use of multiple contention and transmission rounds. In this sense, the MPR MAC protocol schedules several transmission periods once the contention phase finishes. Multiple transmission rounds reduce the overhead and substantially increase throughput. The analytical expressions that support the proposed approach are derived and verified by simulation. The results show that the proposed MAC protocol can yield close to 94% of the ideal performance using only four transmission rounds, compared with 80% of the previous approaches in the literature.

Exploiting Successive Interference Cancellation for Spectrum Sharing Over Unlicensed Bands

Harmonious coexistence among different unlicensed wireless technologies has became increasingly important due to the spectrum shortage problem. As a representative case, we focus on addressing LTE-LAA and WiFi coexistence in unlicensed bands. Traditionally, collision avoidance-based medium access control (MAC) protocols adopted by both LAA and WiFi have led to low channel utilization and fairness. In this paper, we explore physical-layer interference suppression techniques (e.g., successive interference cancellation, SIC) to enhance the spectrum utilization of coexisting LAA and WiFi networks. We propose a SIC-aware MAC protocol that embraces concurrent transmissions and optimizes the channel access strategy at the MAC layer, so as to mitigate the interference (same-technology or cross-technology) due to excess channel contentions. We theoretically analyze the network throughput by extending Bianchi's Markov model, considering the impact of concurrent transmissions and SIC. We also extend the analysis to consider MIMO and MU-MIMO links with SIC. We validate our theoretical analysis and the effectiveness of the proposed MAC protocol via extensive simulations. We also implement a prototype LAA/WiFi SIC receiver on USRP devices to demonstrate the feasibility of cross-technology SIC and the proposed MAC protocol.

A Multi-Phase SMO-Based MAC Protocol for IoT-Enabled WBAN Systems

This paper proposes an optimised Medium Access Control (MAC) protocol to minimise the number of channel access collisions and to improve the bandwidth efficiency of IoT-based Wireless Body Area Networks (WBANs). The frame structure of the proposed MAC protocol consists of three different phases, namely Contention Phase (CP), Transmission Phase (TP), and Inactive Phase (IP). During CP, the proposed protocol prioritises the life-sensitive data. Based on allocated priority, the communicating sensor nodes (SNs) compete for channel access. During TP, the successful SNs transmit their data. We use TDMA mechanism for data transmission and Spider Monkey Optimisation (SMO) technique to improve the bandwidth efficiency of the system by selecting the best possible TDMA time slot according to the data packet size of the SNs. During IP, the SNs go into sleep mode to save energy. We simulate the scenario on MATLAB simulator. The simulation results show that the proposed SMO-MAC improves the throughput by 22.23%, 14.00%, and 17.62%, residual energy by 60.76%, 81.17%, and 124.34%, communication reliability by 70.32%, 52.60%, and 52.60%, and data packet transmission delay by 80.74%, 70.10%, and 77.40% as compared to DRT-MAC, PSO-MAC, and GA-MAC, respectively.

Inspecting VANET with Various Critical Aspects – A Systematic Review

Due to its strategic significance in the area of smart transportation to facilitate Vehicle-to-Vehicle (V2V) and Vehicle-to-Infrastructure (V2I) communication, Vehicular Ad Hoc Networks (VANETs) have grown very popular in recent years. The rapid increase in the number of vehicles on the road has also led to the development of heterogeneous, large-scale, and highly dynamic VANETs, which introduce difficulty to fulfill the stringent requirements, which include low latency, high mobility, top security, and massive connectivity of the 5G network. Research works in VANETs mainly focus on message transmission within strict delay requirements based on different applications, data privacy and security. In this respect, a number of studies have been carried out by the researchers that propose models and solutions linked to the enhancement of VANET from several aspects, including applications, Quality of Service (QoS), security, physical layer fading, Artificial Intelligence (AI) techniques, Medium Access Control (MAC), and routing protocols. These factors serve as the driving force for this study's thorough examination of VANETs, which includes information on specific applications, QoS, channel fading, MAC protocols, channel access mechanisms, routing protocols, security, and difficulties. None of the surveys in existence today address all critical aspects of VANET in a single survey. In this paper, a complete taxonomy of VANETs has been provided based on various issues. First, an overview of VANET is presented with different applications. Then, QoS in VANETs and different proposed MAC protocols are discussed. Channel fading and access mechanisms are presented. After that, routing protocols, security, and clustering in VANETs are provided. AI approaches proposed in VANET are also summarized. Finally, a discussion of future research direction for all aspects is presented. This article might be used as a guide or a point of reference while designing and creating applications, networking and communication systems, and data security for VANETs.

Cluster-Based Spatial–Temporal MAC Scheduling Protocol for Underwater Sensor Networks

Underwater wireless sensor networks (UWSNs) have long propagation delays that cause the problem of spatial-temporal uncertainty, which is a great challenge to transmission scheduling. To solve the scheduling problem, this paper proposes a cluster-based spatial-temporal Medium access control (MAC) scheduling protocol (CSS-MAC). First, the cluster head coefficient is defined according to the number of cluster heads in the node propagation range. Then, with the basic idea that a node with a larger cluster head coefficient transmits at an earlier time, an algorithm to determine the interference nodes is proposed. Second, a new algorithm to create the spatial-temporal conflict graph is proposed according to the collision relationship among the nodes. The proposed algorithm avoids the restriction of multiple prohibition times for a single node and greatly simplifies the spatial-temporal conflict graph. Finally, a distributed transmission moment allocation algorithm is proposed by interacting with the sending priority and sending time information of the nodes within the two-hop range. In the initialization, this paper proposes a clustering algorithm, which ensures that each cluster head node is not within the propagation range of another node, for the proposed MAC protocol. The simulation results show that compared with ST-MAC and CSSTU-MAC, the throughput of CSS-MAC increases by approximately 45% and 38% on average, respectively.

Data concurrent transmission MAC protocol for application oriented underwater acoustic sensor networks

With the increasing demand for marine exploration, underwater acoustic sensor networks (UASNs) are prone to have the characteristics of large-scale, long term monitoring, and high data traffic load. Underwater media access control (MAC) protocols, which allow multiple users to share the common medium fairly and efficiently, are essential for the performance of UASNs. However, the design of MAC protocols is confronted with the challenges of spatial unfairness, data eruption, and low energy efficiency. In this paper, we propose a novel data concurrent transmission (DCT) MAC protocol, which is able to exploit long propagation delay and conduct concurrent transmission. Specifically, we present the theoretical performance analysis of the proposed MAC protocol in detail and give an analytical solution of the success concurrent transmission probability between nodes. In addition, simulation results are provided to demonstrate that our proposed protocol is appropriate for UASNs and can significantly improve the performance in terms of network throughput and energy consumption. Finally, we give some typical future applications of UASNs and discuss the demands on MAC protocol design.

Medium Access Control Protocol for High Altitude Platform Based Massive Machine Type Communication

Massive Machine Type Communication (mMTC) can be used to connect a large number of sensors over a wide coverage area. One of the places where mMTC can be applied is in wireless sensor networks (WSNs). A WSN consists of several sensor nodes that send their sensing information to the cluster head (CH), which can then be forwarded to a high altitude platform (HAP) station. Sensing information can be sent by the sensor nodes at the same time through the same medium, which means collision can occur. When this happens, the sensor node must re-send the sensing information, which causes energy wastage in the WSN. In this paper, we propose a Medium Access Control (MAC) protocol to control access from several sensor nodes during data transmission to avoid collision. The sensor nodes send Round Robin, Interrupt and Query data every eight hours. The initial slot for transmission of the Round Robin data can be either randomized or reserved. Analysis performance was done to see the efficiency of the network with the proposed MAC protocol. Based on the series of simulations that was conducted, the proposed MAC protocol can support a WSN system-based HAP for monitoring every eight hours. The proposed MAC protocol with an initial slot that is reserved for transmission of Round Robin data has greater network efficiency than a randomized slot.

Time-Critical Data Transmission Scheme in Wireless Sensor Networks Using Machine Learning Approach

Wireless sensor network has been extensively used in many real time wireless sensor networks applications. Due to limitations of hardware resources and restricted communication capabilities of sensor nodes, it is very challenging to use wireless sensor networks in real time data transmission. Data collection and routing is the main issue in such applications. To enhance the performance under such real time transmission scenario, it is essential to make the protocol intelligent to choose the appropriate path with change in network scenario. In this paper, we propose a machine learning based Medium Access Control (MAC) protocol to handle real time traffic in wireless sensor networks. To deal with the limitations of WSN in real time application, the proposed scheme can help to increase the performance of time-critical wireless sensor network applications. Simulation results authorize our work, and confirm the accuracy of the proposed MAC protocol strategy is higher than the existing work.

On-Demand Energy Transfer and Energy-Aware Polling-Based MAC for Wireless Powered Sensor Networks.

To improve the performance of the wireless powered sensor network (WPSN), this paper proposes a frequency division duplex (FDD)-based on-demand energy transfer protocol and an energy-aware polling-based medium access control (MAC) protocol, called composite energy and data first (CEDF), by using the numbers of data packets and energy packets to determine polling priorities. The performance of the proposed MAC protocol, i.e., CEDF, along with the on-demand energy transfer protocol was evaluated through simulations, with comparison to the closely related protocols such as the round robin (RR) and data first (DF) polling protocols. Compared with RR and DF, our proposed CEDF performs much better in terms of throughput, data packet loss rate, and delay. Additionally, the doubly near–far problem in WPSNs under our proposed on-demand energy transfer protocol and CEDF was investigated to come up with good solutions to alleviate such a problem.

Priority-Based Dedicated Slot Allocation With Dynamic Superframe Structure in IEEE 802.15.6-Based Wireless Body Area Networks

Wireless body area networks (WBANs) support various types of medical applications with heterogeneous requirements. Therefore, we need to use an efficient medium access control (MAC) protocol to ensure reliable data transmission. In this article, we propose a dynamic superframe structure-based MAC protocol extending the principles of the IEEE 802.15.6 standard. In this work, to allocate dedicated slots for each sensor device, a prioritized dedicated slot allocation mechanism using the criteria importance through intercriteria correlation (CRITIC) is proposed. With the help of this method, the priority value of sensor devices is calculated based on different sensors’ parameters. We compared the performance of our proposed work with standard IEEE 802.15.6 MAC and a few other MAC protocols. The simulation result shows that our proposed MAC protocol performed better in terms of energy efficiency and reliability, as well as reducing the packet drop probability. Results show that the reliability of data transmission increases over the IEEE 802.15.6 MAC protocol by more than 50%.

Priority-Based Hybrid MAC Protocol for VANET with UAV-Enabled Roadside Units

Vehicular ad hoc networks (VANETs) connect vehicles with other network units through wireless communication, thus improving traffic efficiency and safety by interacting with traffic information in networks. Roadside unit (RSU) plays an important role in VANETs in connecting vehicles with the transportation centre. With the rapid development of unmanned aerial vehicles (UAV), UAV-enabled RSU (U-RSU) is an effective way to promote the performance of VANETs. In this paper, a novel medium access control (MAC) layer protocol named PHB-MAC is proposed based on the priority setting of transmitted messages. Firstly, the priority-based contention mechanism is presented to ensure the transmission efficiency of the safety message. Then, the proposed MAC protocol combining contention and adaptive scheduled scheme is described in detail. Finally, the numerical analysis and simulation results of PHB-MAC and other existing protocols are presented. It is revealed that the proposed protocol improves throughput by at least 30%. Meanwhile, it reduces packets drop rate and delay by 21% and 22%, respectively. Finally, the numerical analysis and simulation results are given to prove the advancement of the proposed protocol on throughput, packets drop rate (PDR), and delay.

Majority Voting-Based MAC Protocol for Exploiting Link-Layer Diversity in Wireless Networks.

In wireless local area networks (WLANs), the effect of interference signals between neighboring nodes increases as the number of wireless nodes using limited radio frequency resources in a limited space increases, which can significantly degrade the reliability of data transmission. In high-density WLANs, there can be several neighboring access points (APs) that can receive uplink transmission from a station. In conventional medium access control (MAC) protocols, uplink data frames containing errors or transmitted from a non-associated station are discarded at APs. Alternatively, we propose a MAC protocol using redundant wireless links between neighboring APs and the non-associated stations. In the proposed MAC protocol, we consider a centralized WLAN with a control node that performs error corrections of erroneous uplink data frames via a majority voting algorithm-based link-layer diversity scheme using uplink data received from multiple APs to increase the reliability of data transmission. In addition, we propose an adaptive carrier sensing ranging mechanism to improve the uplink network throughput in the proposed centralized WLAN system. Further, we conduct simulation studies and software-defined radio-based experiments to evaluate the performance of the proposed MAC protocol in various WLAN scenarios.

Packet-Level Slot Scheduling MAC Protocol in Underwater Acoustic Sensor Networks

With the development of the Internet of Underwater Things (IoUT), underwater acoustic sensor networks (UASNs) have become an enabling system to support real-time and continuous data transmission. Existing scheduling-based medium access control (MAC) protocols ignored the limitations between the generation time and the transmission time of forwarding packets. This results in unavailability of some scheduled slots, and makes packets endure more waiting time on relay nodes and thereafter longer end-to-end delay. To reduce transmission latency, this article develops a novel scheduling-based MAC protocol, which schedules slots in the packet level. All packets to be generated and transmitted in a frame are predicted and scheduled. Considering our defined packet collision constraint and traffic-flow constraint, we formulate the slot scheduling problem in a frame into a combinatorial optimization problem, which ensures that all source packets transmitted in a frame can be delivered to the sink node with the minimum average end-to-end delay within the same frame. To solve this problem, two algorithms are proposed, namely, an optimal packet-level slot scheduling (PLSS) algorithm and a heuristic approximate PLSS (PLSS-A) algorithm. The performances of our proposed protocol using both algorithms are evaluated with different network scales, packet lengths, and offered traffic loads. Numerical results demonstrate that both PLSS and PLSS-A perform well in terms of average end-to-end delay and service fairness, and have an advantage in the network throughput in large-scale networks. Our proposed PLSS MAC protocol is predicted to be promising in large-scale UASNs with demand for real-time and long-term monitoring.

PrEEMAC: Priority based energy efficient MAC protocol for Wireless Body Sensor Networks

Wearable wireless sensors, or Wireless Body Sensor Network (WBSN), is one of the most recent fields of research in healthcare applications. The sensors are placed on the human body to detect the critical medical parameters and transmit the collected data to a centralized node. Though the devices work at low energy and power constraints, maintenance of such devices is a crucial aspect. In light of this requirement, an efficient medium access control (MAC) protocol should be utilized to extend the life time of the network. In this paper, we propose a new “Priority based Energy Efficient (PrEE) MAC protocol” incorporated with various priorities in predefined devices based on data sensing and normal devices changing to priority when the value is more than the threshold, by modifying IEEE 802.15.4 header bits. The PrEE MAC protocol is designed based on the IEEE 802.15.4 and its Superframe structure. The simulation results show that the energy efficiency and lifetime of the proposed MAC protocol is more as compared to the existing MAC protocol.

A QoS-Based Medium Access Control Protocol for WBANs and Its Performance Evaluation

Nowadays, Wireless Body Area Networks (WBANs) are used in many fields. WBANs are described as small sensor nodes that communicate wirelessly and provide services to the personal area. Quality of Service (QoS) is an essential issue for WBANs due to the importance of human life. QoS problems can only be solved with a robust Medium Access Control (MAC) protocol in WBANs. To find a solution to this problem, developers performed many MAC protocols for WBANs. ISO/IEEE 11073 health informatics defines the standard of personal health information and purposes to provide interoperability between medical technologies. This paper presents a MAC protocol that provides ISO/IEEE 11073 communication standards with QoS support, bases on cross-layer architecture. We designed a slot assignment scheme, prioritization mechanism, admission control mechanism to provide QoS. The performance evaluation of the proposed MAC protocol is compared with IEEE 802.15.4 and IEEE 802.15.6 protocols by considering end-to-end delay, packet loss ratio, and throughput parameters, and it has achieved out performance. It is observed that the proposed protocol doesn't exceed 45 ms delay, reached 81% traffic load, and a maximum error rate of 0.162%.

A Link-Layer Synchronization and Medium Access Control Protocol for Terahertz-Band Communication Networks

In this paper, a link-layer synchronization and medium access control (MAC) protocol for very-high-speed wireless communication networks in the Terahertz (THz) band is presented. The protocol relies on a receiver-initiated handshake to guarantee synchronization between transmitter and receiver. Two scenarios are considered, namely, a macroscale scenario, where nodes utilize rotating directional antennas to periodically sweep the space while overcoming the distance problem at THz frequencies, and a nanoscale scenario, where nano-devices require energy harvesting systems to operate. Both scenarios are implemented on a centralized and an ad-hoc network architecture. A carrier-based physical layer is considered for the macro-scenario, whereas the physical layer for the nano-scenario is based on a femtosecond-long pulse-based modulation scheme with packet interleaving. The performance of the proposed MAC protocol is analytically investigated in terms of delay, throughput and probability of successful packet delivery, and compared to that of an adapted Carrier Sense Multiple Access with Collision Avoidance (CSMA/CA) with and without handshake. The results are validated by means of extensive simulations with ns-3, in which all the necessary THz elements have been implemented. The results show that the proposed protocol can maximize the successful packet delivery probability without compromising the achievable throughput in THz-band communication networks.

MAC for Machine-Type Communications in Industrial IoT—Part II: Scheduling and Numerical Results

In the second part of this article, we develop a centralized packet transmission scheduling scheme to pair with the protocol designed in Part I and complete our medium access control (MAC) design for machine-type communications in the industrial Internet of Things. For the networking scenario, fine-grained scheduling that attends to each device becomes necessary, given stringent Quality-of-Service (QoS) requirements and diversified service types, but prohibitively complex for a large number of devices. To address this challenge, we propose a scheduling solution in two steps. First, we develop algorithms for device assignment based on the analytical results from Part I, when parameters of the proposed protocol are given. Then, we train a deep neural network for assisting in the determination of the protocol parameters. The two-step approach ensures the accuracy and granularity necessary for satisfying the QoS requirements and avoids excessive complexity from handling a large number of devices. Integrating the distributed coordination in the protocol design from Part I and the centralized scheduling from this part, the proposed MAC protocol achieves high performance, demonstrated through extensive simulations. For example, the results show that the proposed MAC can support 1000 devices under an aggregated traffic load of 3000 packets per second with a single channel and achieve <; 0.5 ms average delay and <; 1% average collision probability among 50 high priority devices.