In wireless ad hoc networks, the performance of the media access control (MAC) protocol has significant impact on the overall network performance. Although the popular IEEE 802.11 DCF mechanism still works under multi-hop scenarios, its efficiency is unacceptable. Many efforts have been made to enhance the mechanism in various aspects. In this paper, a novel MAC protocol, called MAC with Voluntary Waiting (VWMAC), is proposed to solve the intra-flow contention problem in multi-hop ad hoc networks. Through voluntary waiting by mobile hosts according to the length of DATA packet transmitted, VWMAC uses a very simple strategy to achieve great performance enhancement. Our simulation results show that VWMAC outperforms IEEE 802.11 and existing approaches in terms of throughput, transmission delay and energy efficiency.
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