A Cooperative Diversity-Based Robust Mac Protocol in Wireless Ad Hoc Networks

In interference-rich and noisy environment, wireless communication is often hampered by unreliable communication links. Recently, there has been active research on cooperative communication that improves the communication reliability by having a collection of radio terminals transmit signals in a cooperative way. This paper proposes a medium access control (MAC) algorithm, called Cooperative Diversity MAC (CD-MAC), which exploits the cooperative communication capability of the physical (PHY) layer to improve robustness in wireless ad hoc networks. In CD-MAC, each terminal proactively selects a partner for cooperation and lets it transmit simultaneously so that this mitigates interference from nearby terminals, and thus, improves the network performance. For practicability, CD-MAC is designed based on the widely adopted IEEE 802.11 MAC. For accurate evaluation, this study presents and uses a realistic reception model by taking bit error rate (BER), derived from Intersil HFA3861B radio hardware, and the corresponding frame error rate (FER) into consideration. System-level simulation study shows that CD-MAC significantly outperforms the original IEEE 802.11 MAC in terms of packet delivery ratio and end-to-end delay

Adaptive Multicast on Mobile Ad Hoc Networks Using Tree-Based Meshes With Variable Density of Redundant Paths

Multicasting has been extensively studied for mobile ad hoc networks (MANETs) because it is fundamental to many ad hoc network applications requiring close collaboration of multiple nodes in a group. A general approach is to construct an overlay structure such as multicast tree or mesh and to deliver a multicast packet to multiple receivers over the overlay structure. However, it either incurs a lot of overhead (multicast mesh) or performs poorly in terms of delivery ratio (multicast tree). This paper proposes an adaptive multicast scheme, called tree-based mesh with k-hop redundant paths (TBM k ), which constructs a multicast tree and adds some additional links/nodes to the multicast structure as needed to support redundancy. It is designed to make a prudent tradeoff between the overhead and the delivery efficiency by adaptively controlling the path redundancy depending on network traffic and mobility. In other words, when the network is unstable with high traffic and high mobility, a large k is chosen to provide more robust delivery of multicast packets. On the other hand, when the network traffic and the mobility are low, a small k is chosen to reduce the overhead. It is observed via simulation that TBM k improves the packet delivery ratio as much as 35% compared to the multicast tree approach. On the other hand, it reduces control overhead by 23–87% depending on the value of k compared to the multicast mesh approach. In general, TBM k with the small value of k offers more robust delivery mechanism but demands less overhead than multicast trees and multicast meshes, respectively

Adaptive Multicast on Mobile Ad Hoc Networks Using Tree-Based Meshes With Variable Density of Redundant Paths

Multicasting has been extensively studied for mobile ad hoc networks (MANETs) because it is fundamental to many ad hoc network applications requiring close collaboration of multiple nodes in a group. A general approach is to construct an overlay structure such as multicast tree or mesh and to deliver a multicast packet to multiple receivers over the overlay structure. However, it either incurs a lot of overhead (multicast mesh) or performs poorly in terms of delivery ratio (multicast tree). This paper proposes an adaptive multicast scheme, called tree-based mesh with k-hop redundant paths (TBM k ), which constructs a multicast tree and adds some additional links/nodes to the multicast structure as needed to support redundancy. It is designed to make a prudent tradeoff between the overhead and the delivery efficiency by adaptively controlling the path redundancy depending on network traffic and mobility. In other words, when the network is unstable with high traffic and high mobility, a large k is chosen to provide more robust delivery of multicast packets. On the other hand, when the network traffic and the mobility are low, a small k is chosen to reduce the overhead. It is observed via simulation that TBM k improves the packet delivery ratio as much as 35% compared to the multicast tree approach. On the other hand, it reduces control overhead by 23–87% depending on the value of k compared to the multicast mesh approach. In general, TBM k with the small value of k offers more robust delivery mechanism but demands less overhead than multicast trees and multicast meshes, respectively

A Cooperative Diversity-Based Robust Mac Protocol in Wireless Ad Hoc Networks

In interference-rich and noisy environment, wireless communication is often hampered by unreliable communication links. Recently, there has been active research on cooperative communication that improves the communication reliability by having a collection of radio terminals transmit signals in a cooperative way. This paper proposes a medium access control (MAC) algorithm, called Cooperative Diversity MAC (CD-MAC), which exploits the cooperative communication capability of the physical (PHY) layer to improve robustness in wireless ad hoc networks. In CD-MAC, each terminal proactively selects a partner for cooperation and lets it transmit simultaneously so that this mitigates interference from nearby terminals, and thus, improves the network performance. For practicability, CD-MAC is designed based on the widely adopted IEEE 802.11 MAC. For accurate evaluation, this study presents and uses a realistic reception model by taking bit error rate (BER), derived from Intersil HFA3861B radio hardware, and the corresponding frame error rate (FER) into consideration. System-level simulation study shows that CD-MAC significantly outperforms the original IEEE 802.11 MAC in terms of packet delivery ratio and end-to-end delay

Wireless Channel Models for Over-the-Sea Communication: A Comparative Study

Over the past few years, the modeling of wireless channels for radio wave propagation over the sea surface has drawn the attention of many researchers. Channel models are designed and implemented for different frequencies and communication scenarios. There are models that emphasize the influence of the height of the evaporation duct in the marine environment, as well as models that deal with different frequencies (2.5, 5, and 10 GHz, etc.) or the impact of various parameters, such as antenna height. Despite the increasing literature on channel modeling for the over-the-sea marine environment, there is no comprehensive study that focuses on key concepts that need to be considered when developing a new channel model, characteristics of channel models, and comparative analysis of existing works along with their possible improvements and future applications. In this paper, channel models are discussed in relation to their operational principles and key features, and they are compared with each other in terms of major characteristics and pros and cons. Some important insights on the design and implementation of a channel model, possible applications and improvements, and challenging issues and research directions are also discussed. The main goal of this paper is to present a comparative study of over-the-sea channel models for radio wave propagation, so that it can help engineers and researchers in this field to choose or design the appropriate channel models based on their applications, classification, features, advantages, and limitations

A Survey of MAC Protocols for Cognitive Radio Body Area Networks

The advancement in electronics, wireless communications and integrated circuits has enabled the development of small low-power sensors and actuators that can be placed on, in or around the human body. A wireless body area network (WBAN) can be effectively used to deliver the sensory data to a central server, where it can be monitored, stored and analyzed. For more than a decade, cognitive radio (CR) technology has been widely adopted in wireless networks, as it utilizes the available spectra of licensed, as well as unlicensed bands. A cognitive radio body area network (CRBAN) is a CR-enabled WBAN. Unlike other wireless networks, CRBANs have specific requirements, such as being able to automatically sense their environments and to utilize unused, licensed spectra without interfering with licensed users, but existing protocols cannot fulfill them. In particular, the medium access control (MAC) layer plays a key role in cognitive radio functions, such as channel sensing, resource allocation, spectrum mobility and spectrum sharing. To address various application-specific requirements in CRBANs, several MAC protocols have been proposed in the literature. In this paper, we survey MAC protocols for CRBANs. We then compare the different MAC protocols with one another and discuss challenging open issues in the relevant research

Energy-Efficient and Fast MAC Protocol in UAV-Aided Wireless Sensor Networks for Time-Critical Applications

Unmanned aerial vehicle (UAV)-aided wireless sensor networks (UWSNs) can be effectively used for time-critical sensing applications. UAVs can be used to collect the sensed data from sensors and transfer them to a base station. The real-time transfer of data is highly desired in the time-critical applications. However, the medium access control (MAC) protocols designed for UWSNs so far are primarily focused on the efficient use of UAVs to collect data in the sensing areas. In this paper, we propose an energy-efficient and fast MAC (EF-MAC) protocol in UWSNs for time-critical sensing applications. EF-MAC adopts carrier sense multiple access (CSMA) for the registration of sensor nodes with a UAV and time division multiple access (TDMA) with variable slot time for the transmission of collected data. The UAV is equipped with two transceivers to minimize both energy consumption and delay in air-to-ground communication. The energy consumption and delay are formally analyzed and the performance of EF-MAC is evaluated via extensive simulation. The simulation results show that the proposed EF-MAC outperforms the conventional MAC protocols in terms of energy efficiency and communication delay

An Energy-Efficient and Robust Multipath Routing Protocol for Cognitive Radio Ad Hoc Networks

Routing in cognitive radio ad hoc networks (CRAHNs) is a daunting task owing to dynamic topology, intermittent connectivity, spectrum heterogeneity, and energy constraints. Other prominent aspects such as channel stability, path reliability, and route discovery frequency should also be exploited. Several routing protocols have been proposed for CRAHNs in the literature. By stressing on one of the aspects more than any other, however, they do not satisfy all requirements of throughput, energy efficiency, and robustness. In this paper, we propose an energy-efficient and robust multipath routing (ERMR) protocol for CRAHNs by considering all prominent aspects including residual energy and channel stability in design. Even when the current routing path fails, the alternative routing path is immediately utilized. In establishing primary and alternative routing paths, both residual energy and channel stability are exploited simultaneously. Our simulation study shows that the proposed ERMR outperforms the conventional protocol in terms of network throughput, packet delivery ratio, energy consumption, and end-to-end delay