ADHOC – MAC : a new, flexible and reliable MAC architecture for ad-hoc networks

Ad-hoc networking, though an attractive solution for many applications, still presents many unsolved issues, such as the hidden-terminal problem, flexible and prompt access, QoS provisioning, and efficient broadcast service. In this paper we present a MAC architecture able to solve the above issues in environments with no power consumption limitation, such as networks for inter-vehicle communications. This new architecture is based on a completely distributed access technique, RR-ALOHA, capable to dynamically establish on a slotted/framed structure a reliable single-hop broadcast channel for each active terminal on the network. Though the proposed MAC uses a slotted channel, it can be adapted to operate on the physical layer of different standards, including the UMTS Terrestrial Radio Access TDD, and the IEEE 802.11. The paper presents the mechanisms that compose the new MAC: the basic RR-ALOHA protocol, an efficient broadcast service and the reservation of point-to-point channels that exploit parallel transmissions. Some basic performance figures are discussed to prove the effectiveness of this protocol.