Reservation MAC protocols for Ad-Hoc Networks: Analysis of the Approaches

Multimedia and real-time applications require bandwidth guarantees, which may be achieved by resource reservation. Several researches were done to propose efficient reservation MAC protocols for ad-hoc networks. In these schemes, channel is segmented into super-frames composed of fixed number of slots. They allocate slots to each traffic source, and make sure that neighbor nodes record the reservation in order to ensure consistency of reservations between neighbor nodes. However, resource reservation in ad-hoc networks remain a very challenging task due to the instability of radio channels, node mobility and lack of coordination between mobile nodes. Proposed reservation MAC protocols like CATA, FPRP, R-CSMA and SRMA/PA have limitations and are suitable only for particular situations. In this paper, we propose a comparative analysis of the most representative reservation MAC protocols. We identify the major issues unresolved by reservation MAC protocols. A performance evaluation and comparative analysis with the IEEE 802.11e are achieved through the NS-2 simulator.