CH-MAC: A Cluster-based, Hybrid TDMA MAC Protocol over Wireless Ad-hoc Networks

In this paper, we propose a distributed TDMA MAC protocol over wireless ad-hoc networks, called CH-MAC. The key design component of CH-MAC is the notion of clusters, where a cluster head maintains the information about how slots are allocated over the one-hop neighborhood. This cluster-based operation enables CH-MAC to opportunistically operate in a hybrid fashion of being both reactive and proactive. In other words, once a node intends to be allocated some slots, its cluster head provides the information about the interfering slots over near-by nodes in a proactive way, and far-away interference such as the one by hidden nodes is handled in a reactive manner. This hybrid operation based on clusters offers a wider design space of appropriately trading off the slot-allocation response time and the number of control overheads. We validate the efficiency of CH-MAC over a variety of scenarios in terms of the number of nodes and the network topology.