Performance Evaluation of a New Cooperative MAC Protocol with a Helper Node Selection Scheme in Ad Hoc Networks

A new cooperative MAC protocol called the busy tone cooperative medium access control (BT-COMAC) protocol is proposed to overcome the drawbacks and maximize the advantages of existing schemes. This scheme uses a new metric called decibel power to decide an appropriate helper node. Using received power strength is more efficient in selecting an appropriate helper node, especially in a densely populated network, than the effective transmission rates used in conventional schemes. All communication nodes in a communication service area are assumed to move independently. Two performance metrics are used: System throughput and channel access delay. A performance evaluation of the BT-COMAC protocol is conducted using a computer simulation over a slow fading wireless channel, and its performance results are compared with those of four existing schemes. The numerical results show that the BT-COMAC protocol improves the system throughput by approximately 15% as compared to the best existing scheme.