Mission-Aware Medium Access Control in Random Access Networks

We study mission-critical networking in wireless communication networks, where network users are subject to critical events such as emergencies and crises. If a critical event occurs to a user, the user needs to send necessary information for help as early as possible. However, most existing medium access control (MAC) protocols are not adequate to meet the urgent need for information transmission by users in a critical situation. In this paer, we propose a novel class of MAC protocols that utilize available past information as well as current information. Our proposed protocols are mission-aware since they prescribe different transmission decision rules to users in different situations. We show that the proposed protocols perform well not only when the system faces a critical situation but also when there is no critical situation. By utilizing past information, the proposed protocols coordinate transmissions by users to achieve high throughput in the normal phase of operation and to let a user in a critical situation make successful transmissions while it is in the critical situation. Moreover, the proposed protocols require short memory and no message exchanges. Index Terms — Mission-critical networking, MAC protocols, slotted Aloha, memory-based protocols.