A Q-Learning Based Cross-Layer Transmission Protocol for MANETs

摘要

The frequent change of mobile ad hoc networks (MANETs) have made it challenging to establish and maintain efficient communications in MANETs. Different from the traditional transmission protocols which focus on single layer improvement, we propose a novel cross-layer transmission protocol. At the MAC layer, this paper proposed a Carrier Sense Multiple Access with Multi-channel Automatic Synchronization MAC protocol(CSMA/MAS). By CSMA/MAS, all nodes in network can be synchronized and then served in a round-robin fashion without contention collisions. At the network layer, this paper modified the existing Q-learning based Routing protocol such as QGeo and QGrid. Finally, MAC delay will be provided to the network layer. This information can be utilized by the network layer to choose a better routing path for each packet. Simulation results show that the proposed transmission protocol can provide higher packet arrival ratio and lower end-to-end delay than the existing transmission protocol.