AIMAC: An Auction-Inspired MAC Protocol

Much attention has been given over the past decade to examining the properties of ad-hoc wireless networks. Current trends, however, show that the proliferation of access point (AP) based wireless networks continues to grow, and impending deployments of large-scale AP-based networks in metropolitan areas (see [?] and [?]) speak volumes for their popularity. Given the continued spread of AP-based WiFi networks, it would be foolish to ignore the role an AP can play in enforcing MAC protocol adherence. As WiFi reaches wider and wider audiences, the potential for protocol-level misbehavior grows tremendously. Fortunately, AP-based and distributed solutions have been proposed to detect MAC-layer misbehavior. In the following sections, we first briefly review previous work in 802.11 MAC misbehavior. In light of this work, we next reconsider the role of the AP within the network. After recasting the AP as an auctioneer of channel resources, we propose an Auction-Inspired MAC protocol (AIMAC) that implicitly discourages greedy nodes from continually occupying the wireless channel (i.e. from misbehaving). Additionally, preliminary simulation results are given.