Channel Access Scheduling in Ad Hoc Networks with Unidirectional Links

摘要

A new family of collision-free channel access protocols for ad hoc networks with unidirectional links is introduced. These protocols are based on a distributed contention resolution algorithm that operates at each node based on the list of direct contenders (one-hop neighbors or incident links) and indirect interferences (two-hop neighbors and related links). Depending on the activation scheme (node activation or link activation), a network node uses the identifiers of its neighbors one and two hops away to elect deterministically one or multiple winners for channel access in each contention context (e.g., a time slot or a frequency band). The protocols are shown to be fair and capable of achieving maximum utilization of the channel bandwidth. The delay and throughput characteristics of the channel access protocols is studied by simulations.