ADHOC MAC: a new MAC architecture for ad hoc networks providing efficient and reliable point-to-point and broadcast services

Ad-hoc networking, though an attractive solution for many applications, still has many unsolved issues, such as the hidden-terminal problem, flexible and prompt access, QoS provisioning, and efficient broadcast service. In this paper we present a MAC architecture able to solve the above issues in environments with no power consumption limitations, such as networks for inter-vehicle communications. This new architecture is based on a completely distributed access technique, RR-ALOHA, capable of dynamically establishing, for each active terminal in the network, a reliable single-hop broadcast channel on a slotted/framed structure. Though the proposed architecture uses a slotted channel it can be adapted to operate on the physical layer of different standards, including the UMTS Terrestrial Radio Access TDD, and IEEE 802.11. The paper presents the mechanisms that compose the new MAC: the basic RR-ALOHA protocol, an efficient broadcast service and the reservation of point-to-point channels that exploit parallel transmissions. Some basic performance figures are discussed to prove the effectiveness of the protocol.