Abstract

Motivated by the poor experimental scaling reported in a study of the performance of ad hoc networks in [15], we propose a new protocol for media access control in ad hoc networks. Our protocol seeks to avoid collisions without making explicit reservations for each and every packet. The key idea is to employ a random schedule which is driven by a pseudo-random number generator. By exchanging the seeds of their pseudo-random number generators within a two-hop neighborhood, the nodes effectively publish their schedules to all hidden as well as exposed nodes. This allows each node to opportunistically choose transmission slots. This scheme can also be employed during the reservation phase of a protocol such as IEEE 802.11. Throughput calculations and simulation results are presented.

Citations