A protocol for topology-dependent transmission scheduling in wireless networks

Abstract

A new channel access protocol for ad-hoc networks based on topology-dependent transmission scheduling, named collision-avoidance time allocation (CATA), is introduced. CATA allows nodes to contend for and reserve time slots by means of a distributed reservation and handshake mechanism. Contention is limited among nodes within two hops of one another, which provides a very efficient spatial reuse of the bandwidth available. CATA ensures that no collisions occur in successfully reserved time slots, even when hidden terminals exist. Reservations in CATA support unicasting, multicasting and broadcasting simultaneously, and adapt to dynamic service time. The throughput achieved by CATA is analyzed for the case of a fully-connected network topology. Numerical results show that CATA can achieve very high throughput.