MAC-ASA: A New MAC Protocol for WMNs

Abstract

This paper presents a novel medium access control (MAC) protocol intended to provide multi-hop wireless mesh networks with a higher throughput. The proposed MAC-ASA (medium access control with anticipated scheduling and agreement) protocol uses a modified version of the 802.11 CSMA/CA contention handling procedure integrated with a dynamic (time division multiple access) TDMA-like protocol structure. It combines distributed link scheduling algorithm with power control support for router -router communications with a self agreement protocol for the client -router communications. In addition, the proposed algorithm solves the "exposed node" problem by applying multiple frequencies and time saving policies. These features result in a significant improvement of the throughput in many scenarios. Performance results from an OPNET model are presented in this paper.