MACA-BI (MACA by invitation) – a receiver oriented access protocol for wireless multihop networks

Abstruct- A novel wireless MAC protocol named MACA-BI (MACA By Invitation) is in-troduced. MACA-BI is a simplifiedversion of the well known MACA (Multiple Access Collision Avoidance) protocol, which is based on the Re-quest to Send/Clear to Send (RTS/CTS) hand-shake and which has inspired the IEEE 802.11 wireless LAN standard. In MACA-BI, the RTS part of the RTS/CTS handshake is suppressed, leaving only the Clear to Send control message which can be viewed as an “invitation ” by the receiver to transmit. This reduction greatly im-proves efficiency when radio turn-around time is significant with respect to packet transmission time. Yet, it preserves the “data ” collision free property of MACA. Simulation results for var-ious multihop topologies show that, when traf-fic characteristics are stationary or predictable, MACA-I31 outperforms several known multiple access protocols, especially when “hidden termi-nal ” conditions are predominant. I