EXTENSIONS TO DISTRIBUTED MAC PROTOCOLS WITH COLLISION AVOIDANCE USING RTS/CTS EXCHANGES

摘要

In a communication network having a plurality of stations and a shared commoncommunications medium using a collision avoidance media access protocol forcommunication between the stations; in which medium access is granted to a pair ofstations obtaining a successful reservation of the medium; the pair of stations comprisinga requester station and a target station, wherein multiple stations may request access tothe medium to send data, a method of establishing a reservation between stationscomprising: the requesting stations sending Request-to-Send (RTS) control frames and thereceiving stations responding as appropriate with Clear-to-Send (CTS) control frames;wherein a requesting node aborts the reservation if the medium becomes active betweenits RTS transmission and the corresponding CTS response of its target station; performingarbitration by stations receiving the RTS transmission as follows: if a receiving stationreceives multiple Request-to-Send (RTS) control frames directed to the receiving stationduring a contention period, the receiving station responds to the last RTS control framereceived by transmitting Clear-to-Send (CTS) control frames; if the receiving stationreceives multiple RTS control frames directed to different receiving stations during acontention period, the receiving station will respect the first RTS control frame received.