Research Article
MBA-DbMAC: A Random-Access MAC Protocol for MBAs
@INPROCEEDINGS{10.1007/978-3-030-37262-0_6, author={Jean-Daniel Medjo Me Biomo and Thomas Kunz and Marc St-Hilaire}, title={MBA-DbMAC: A Random-Access MAC Protocol for MBAs}, proceedings={Ad Hoc Networks. 11th EAI International Conference, ADHOCNETS 2019, Queenstown, New Zealand, November 18--21, 2019, Proceedings}, proceedings_a={ADHOCNETS}, year={2020}, month={1}, keywords={Directional MAC protocol Multi-beam antenna Ad hoc networks Opnet/Riverbed}, doi={10.1007/978-3-030-37262-0_6} }- Jean-Daniel Medjo Me Biomo
Thomas Kunz
Marc St-Hilaire
Year: 2020
MBA-DbMAC: A Random-Access MAC Protocol for MBAs
ADHOCNETS
Springer
DOI: 10.1007/978-3-030-37262-0_6
Abstract
Ad hoc networks are infrastructureless and self-organizing networks that consist of static/mobile nodes with limited bandwidth, computing ability and energy. These networks are deployed for civilian/military applications. Having an efficient/reliable routing protocol for communication between the nodes can be critical. A current research avenue involves exploiting Multi-Beam directional Antennas (MBA) to significantly reduce the end-to-end delay in multi-hop ad hoc networks that service multiple traffic flows. To tackle such an issue at the Network level, there is a need for a suitable MAC protocol underneath. In this paper we propose MBA-DbMAC, a MAC protocol for MBAs. MBA-DbMAC is a generic MAC protocol that has the basic functionalities of a MAC protocol and renders possible the basic operation of MBA-equipped nodes in static/mobile ad hoc networks. We adopt a two-tier processing approach whereby the MAC layer is split into two artificial sub-layers: a controller sub-layer (materialized by one node-wide parent process) and a sector sub-layer (materialized by N child processes, 1 child process for each of the N sectors). Other novel aspects of this protocol are the decoupled broadcasting and the time window policy that we adopt to avoid Critical Chain Transmission/Reception. We use Opnet for the implementation/simulations. It is shown that MBA-DbMAC perfectly performs key functions such as unicasting, broadcasting, and concurrent packet transmission/reception.