CoopMACA: a cooperative MAC protocol using packet aggregation

Abstract

In this paper we propose a cooperative MAC protocol for Wireless Local Area Networks (WLAN) that involves the concept of cooperation among nodes to avoid the negative effect caused by multi rate modulation employed in IEEE 802.11 standards. In our proposed protocol a low data rate direct transmission link is replaced by two faster transmission links using a relay node. During transmission, each node selects either direct or indirect transmission (through a helper node) in order to minimize the total transmission time and utilizes the packet aggregation concept to improve the system throughput. The new protocol does not violate the inter frame space specified in IEEE 802.11 and shows compatibility with the standard. We give the mathematical analysis that shows that our proposed protocol increases the system throughput considerably in comparison to the existing ones. The analytical results are supported with the help of simulation. We have shown how this protocol can be implemented in combination with others to improve the system throughput in specific network scenarios.

A Fair Cooperative MAC Protocol in IEEE 802.11 WLAN

“…The EMR selects the highest effective throughput as a metric and the winning relay is selected through a priority-based contention between relay candidates. The other protocols fitting this category can improve the performance of an IEEE 802.11 MAC protocol with some special techniques and features, such as frame aggregation in CoopMACA [11] and RRS-CMAC [12], concurrent transmissions in CCMAC [13], network coding in CODE [14] and EAP-CMAC [15], a cross-layer approach in MACR-CCT [16], interference reduction in CLS-MAC [17] and contention-based relay selection in RCD-MAC [18] and CRP-CMAC [19].…”

Cooperation Metric for IEEE 802.11 Wireless Networks

“…The approach of concurrent cooperative transmissions, allied to a store and forward approach, used in the CCMAC protocol [7] provides improved performance when compared to the original CoopMAC. In the CoopMACA protocol [6], the authors employ packet aggregation and distributed contention based relay selection 978-1-4799-3223-8/14/$31.00 ©2014 IEEE algorithm to provide a robust adaptation instantaneously for variation of network topology especially in a general mobile scenario. The author of the EMR protocol [8] proposes the use of a priority-mapping scheme of available throughput and integrates the information into the control packets in order to select the optimum relay node.…”

A rapid cooperation-differentiated medium access control protocol with packet piggyback for multihop wireless networks

“…Recently, more and more cooperative MAC protocols make use of the helper selection method, that is, the helper contention method [4,13,[23][24][25]. In the IrcMAC protocol [13], helpers are allocated one of eight different priorities.…”

“…Moreover, multiple helpers may be selected to relay the data packet at the same time, which requires strict time synchronization and higher power consumption. The CoopMAC-aggregation (CoopMACA) protocol [24] uses a packet aggregation mechanism to improve throughput performance. Its helper selection procedure includes a classification round, priority round, and contention round.…”