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A novel IEEE 802.11‐based MAC protocol supporting cooperative communications
Author(s) -
Liu Wei,
Jin Huan,
Wang Xinbing,
Guizani Mohsen
Publication year - 2011
Publication title -
international journal of communication systems
Language(s) - English
Resource type - Journals
SCImago Journal Rank - 0.344
H-Index - 49
eISSN - 1099-1131
pISSN - 1074-5351
DOI - 10.1002/dac.1235
Subject(s) - computer science , computer network , physical layer , relay , network packet , cooperative diversity , ieee 802.11 , throughput , node (physics) , antenna diversity , network allocation vector , transmission (telecommunications) , fading , wireless , channel (broadcasting) , telecommunications , power (physics) , physics , structural engineering , quantum mechanics , engineering
Cooperative diversity is a transmission technique, where multiple terminals form a virtual antenna array that realizes spatial diversity gain in a distributed fashion. The concept of cooperation has already been introduced to MAC layer to design MAC protocol. But it does not take advantage of physical layer's cooperation. In this paper, we present a novel MAC protocol based on IEEE 802.11, called C‐MAC, which is able to support the basic building block of cooperative system. In other words, in C‐MAC, a source would invite a relay node into data transmission if there exits an available one. During data transmission, the source sends the signal to destination in the first time slot. The relay node will retransmit the overheard information to the destination in the second time slot. The destination combines two signals from the source and the helper to create the spatial diversity and robustness against channel fading. The C‐MAC is backward compatible to the legacy IEEE 802.11 system. The performance of C‐MAC mainly depends on physical layer's performance as it just provides the support for cooperation at the MAC layer. If the physical layer works well, C‐MAC would outperform IEEE 802.11 when considering packet error rate (PER). We also perform extensive simulation using ns‐2 with assumptive physical parameters. The results show that C‐MAC would outperform 802.11 if PER is over some threshold, e.g. when PER is 0.4, C‐MAC can achieve up to 11.5% higher throughput than IEEE 802.11. Copyright © 2011 John Wiley & Sons, Ltd.