Investigation of MAC Protocols for Broadband PLC Networks under Realistic Traffic Conditions

摘要

Because of EMC problem PLC access networks have to operate with a limited signal power, which causes also reduction of available data rate. To be able to compete with other access technologies, PLC systems have to ensure a good network utilization and realization of different QoS guarantees. This can be provided by application of an efficient MAC layer. The investigation of MAC protocols for PLC has to be done under possibly realistic traffic models. For this purpose, we consider simple and multimodal source models, representing internet based data traffic, and apply them for investigation of different MAC protocols using per-packet reservation. Simulations under near to realistic traffic conditions confirm advantages of the two-step protocol, compared with extended ALOHA and extended polling reservation protocols. It is also concluded that the protocol performance depends mainly on the mean packet size and the mean interarrival time, defined in the traffic models.