IJCA Special Issue on “Mobile Ad-hoc Networks”

MANETs, 2010

IEEE 802.11 Based MAC Improvements for MANET

Ajay Dureja Aman Dureja Meha Khera
Asstt. Prof, PDM College of Asstt. Prof, PDM College of Lecturer in BITS,Bhiwani,
Engineering, B’Garh, INDIA Engineering, B’Garh, INDIA H.No.37, Bhagat Singh Marg, Vidya
Nagar, Meham Road, INDIA

ABSTRACT family uses a MAC layer known as CSMA/CA (Carrier Sense

Broadcasting is one of the essential communication models of Multiple Access/Collision Avoidance) NOTE: Classic Ethernet
MANETs. Many MANET multicast routing protocols rely uses CSMA/CD - collision detection). CSMA/CA is, like all
heavily upon MAC layer's broadcast support. However, the Ethernet protocols, peer-to-peer (there is no requirement for a
broadcast mechanism of the standard IEEE 802.11 cannot master station).
provide reliable broadcasting service. In this paper, we improve In CSMA/CA a Wireless node that wants to transmit performs
the IEEE 802.11 broadcast mechanism's reliability by introducing the following sequence:
the new layer of MAC called Dual MAC.
1. Listen on the desired channel.
Multihop ad-hoc wireless networks offer great challenges for 2. If channel is idle (no active transmitters) it sends a packet.
protocol designers. Stations in such networks are constrained by 3. If channel is busy (an active transmitter) node waits until
factors like low power, limited bandwidth, link errors, and transmission stops then a further CONTENTION period. (The
collisions. Changes are needed at various levels of the protocol Contention period is a random period after every transmit on
stack, most importantly at the medium access layer (MAC). The every node and statistically allows every node equal access to the
medium access mechanism in multihop wireless networks should media. To allow tx to rx turn around the contention time is
minimize collisions, and take care of the hidden and exposed slotted 50 micro sec for FH and 20 micro sec for DS systems).
node problems. The IEEE 802.11 MAC with Distributed
Coordination Function (DCF) does not scale well in such
networks. We introduce Point Coordination Function (PCF) in
the region of high traffic areas, and discuss its effect on network
performance.
To improve network scalability and throughput, we propose the
design of a new MAC called Dual MAC. This work discusses
Figure 1
architecture and working of the dual MAC in detail.
Keywords 4. If the channel is still idle at the end of the CONTENTION
period the node transmits its packet otherwise it repeats the
Medium Access Layer, Distributed Coordination function, Point process defined in 3 above until it gets a free channel.
coordinated function. Key:
1. D = DCF Inter Frame Space (DIFS)
INTRODUCTION 2. S = Short Inter Frame Space (SIFS)
In recent times, the wireless networks have become very popular. 3. CW = Contention Window
Wireless LANs are being deployed on airports, conferences, etc. 4. MPDU = MAC Protocol Data Unit
People have started using portable laptops to access Internet and 5. A = Ack
other resources using wireless networks while moving. Another 802 11 also offers a polling mode (known as PCF - Point Co-
area which has generated a lot of interest recently, is wireless ad- ordination Function) which is fairly classic polling scheme e.g.
hoc networks. An ad-hoc network is formed when two or more 3270 bi-sync!! As with all polling protocols a single master (Base
stations come together form an independent network. Ad-hoc Station) is required.
networks are also termed as infrastructure-less networks since as
they do not require any prior infrastructure. Two stations that are 1. ORIGINAL 802.11 MAC
within transmission range of each other are called one hop
neighbors. Multihop ad-hoc networks are ones in which the 1.1 DCF
stations can talk to stations more than one hop away via The basic 802.11 MAC layer uses the Distributed Coordination
intermediate stations. Cooperative ad-hoc networks are formed Function (DCF) to share the medium between multiple stations.
by several homogeneous wireless stations. All the stations DCF relies on CSMA/CA and optional 802.11 RTS/CTS to share
cooperate with each other, i.e., the traffic for the stations that are the medium between stations. This has several limitations:
more than one hop away is routed by the intermediate stations.
If many stations communicate at the same time, many
The intermediate stations are called relaying stations.
collisions will occur, which will lower the available
The following section describes the common Media Access bandwidth (just like in Ethernet, which uses
Control layer used by the 802.11 family of standards. The 802.11 CSMA/CD)

54
 IJCA Special Issue on “Mobile Ad-hoc Networks”
MANETs, 2010

There are no Quality of Service (QoS) guarantees. In 3. MAC IN IEEE 802.11 IN MULTIHOP
particular, there is no notion of high or low priority
SCENARIO
traffic.
The IEEE 802.11 MAC is designed for wireless LANs. The
Once a station "wins" access to the medium, it may requirements of multihop ad-hoc networks are more challenging
keep the medium for as long as it chooses. If a station than those of wireless LANs. We will investigate the operation of
has a low bit rate (1 Mbit/s, for example), then it will IEEE 802.11 MAC in centralized multihop ad-hoc networks. The
take a long time to send its packet, and all other terms station and node are used interchangeably throughout the
stations will suffer from that. thesis. Multihop cooperative wireless ad-hoc networks will be
1.2 PCF simply referred to as multihopnetworks
The original 802.11 MAC defines another coordination function
called the Point Coordination Function (PCF): this is available
only in "infrastructure" mode, where stations are connected to the
network through an Access Point (AP). This mode is optional,
and only very few APs or Wi-Fi adapters actually implement it.
APs send "beacon" frames at regular intervals (usually every 0.1
second). Between these beacon frames, PCF defines two periods:
the Contention Free Period (CFP) and the Contention Period
(CP). In CP, the DCF is simply used. In CFP, the AP sends
Contention Free-Poll (CF-Poll) packets to each station, one at a
time, to give them the right to send a packet. The AP is the
coordinator. This allows for a better management of the QoS.
Unfortunately, the PCF has limited support and a number of . Figure 3: Multihop Scenario
limitations (for example, it does not define classes of traffic).
Consider a multihop centralized scenario, as shown in the figure
1.3 802.11e MAC protocol Operation 4.1. For convenience, the stations inside the network are
The 802.11e enhances the DCF and the PCF, through a new classified into following categories: Central station is the central
coordination function: the Hybrid Coordination Function (HCF). controlling station. Most of the traffic in the network is directed
Within the HCF, there are two methods of channel access, towards it. Inner stations are within one hop boundary of the
similar to those defined in the legacy 802.11 MAC: HCF central station. Boundary stations are at one hop boundary of the
Controlled Channel Access (HCCA) and Enhanced Distributed central station. These stations act as relaying stations for the
Channel Access (EDCA). Both EDCA and HCCA define Traffic stations outside the reach of central node. Outer stations are
Categories (TC). For example, emails could be assigned to a low outside the communication range of central node.
priority class, and Voice over Wireless LAN (VoWLAN) could 3.1 IEEE 802.11 Operations in Multihop
be assigned to a high priority class.
Networks
Standard has been extended to support 2 Mb/s for Frequency
Hopping and 5.5 and 11 Mb/s for Direct Sequence (802.11b). The 802.11 MAC with DCF mode of operation is the simplest
choice in multihop ad-hoc networks. The reason for the choice of
DCF is that it does not require any prior infrastructure. Two or
more stations can come together and form an BSS. This nature of
DCF is very suitable for ad-hoc networks as the ad-hoc networks
are simply formed by as set of stations coming together. In this
section we discuss the operation of 802.11 MAC in multihop
networks, especially centralized multihop ad-hoc networks In a
centralized multihop network, as shown in Figure 4, the node
density in central region is higher than in the outer region. Most
of the traffic is directed toward the central node and boundary
stations act as relaying stations. Therefore, the traffic near the
central station and its one hop neighbors is very high. Since the
DCF is a contention based distributed protocol, it performs badly
in high load conditions. The poor performance of DCF is due to
fact that the collisions increase as more and more stations try to
access the medium at the same time. It is well known that the
polling
The most suitable choice for the polling MAC would be PCF
mode of 802.11, as it is an extension of the DCF mode. Ebert et.
Figure 2 MAC Layer all [8] have shown that the PCF mode performs better than DCF
when the number of stations in WLAN cell is very high.

55
 IJCA Special Issue on “Mobile Ad-hoc Networks”
MANETs, 2010

Therefore, we make the central node as Point Coordinator (PC), and 5 that are equipped with dual MACs. One of the MACs uses
and it polls all the inner and boundary nodes during CFP period. the PCF and is termed as PCF MAC. The second MAC uses the
This differs from conventional PCF operation in WLANs where DCF and is termed as DCF MAC.
PC resides within AP. The outer stations still perform DCF since The PCF MAC communicates with the PC, and the DCF MAC
the traffic in those regions is not high. The outer stations can communicates with the outer nodes. The exposed and hidden
send their data in contention period (CP) as all the stations node problems in central region are eliminated as follows:
perform DCF during CP. We refer this combination of PCF and
DCF as hybrid operation as shown in figure 4. • Boundary stations use the PCF and the DCF on different
channels. Therefore, the transmission of outer node does not
The hybrid operation seems to be an ideal choice in multihop collide with that of PC, and vice versa.
networks, but it gives rise to following problems:
• The DCF MAC in the dual node can receive from outer nodes
• The stations that are polled by the Point Coordinator (PC) keep even when the NAV of PCF MAC is set during CFP period,
their NAV set during the CFP period, and therefore, can not thereby eliminating exposed node problem.
receive from outer stations. It can also be said that the boundary
nodes become exposed to PC. 4.1 Architecture of Dual MAC

Figure 4 Hybrid PCF-DCF Operations

Outer stations become hidden to PC, and vice versa, as there is

no RTS/CTS exchange between PC and its one hop neighbors
during CFP period.
3.2 Problem Description Figure 5: Architecture of Dual Mac
Simple DCF is not suitable for centralized multihop network due
to collisions at high traffic. A polling MAC (PCF) is required at
4.2 Operation
the centre of the network to handle high traffic and reduce A packet arriving from link layer is received by the dual MAC
collision, but it gives rise to hidden and exposed node problems. and handed over to the MAC at appropriate frequency. The link
The solution to both of these problems is provided by introducing layer finds out the MAC address of the next hop destination by
dual Nodes at the boundary of the central node. using ARP and hands out the packet to the dual MAC layer along
with the destination MAC address. In case dual MAC, the dual
4. DUAL MAC MAC also needs to know the channel of the destination station.
Due to these reasons we introduce Dual MAC, This could be done either by ARP table maintaining information
about the channel on which the destination stations is
1. The DCF does not work well in high load scenario.
communication, or by maintaining a local list of stations on each
2. In case of hybrid operation, the polling and NAV setting in channel. The dual MAC figures out the channel of the destination
PCF nodes cause exposed and hidden node problems, thereby MAC and sends out the packet to the appropriate MAC. The
decrease the throughput. To improve the throughput, boundary broadcast packets like route discovery packets and ARP packets
nodes should be able to receive date from outer nodes during the are sent to both the Macs. On Receiving a packet from layer, the
CFP period (NAV is set). For this the MAC should be able to dual MAC simply hands it out to the link layer. The operation of
receive even if its NAV is set. Also, transmissions from outer the dual MAC is summarized in figure 6
stations should not collide with that of PC at boundary stations.
To address above problems, we propose to equip boundary
stations with dual MAC.
A dual node is a station which has two independent MACs each
communicating on different logical channels. The two MACs are
encapsulated inside the dual MAC. The logical channels could be
FDMA or CDMA. Consider the boundary stations in Figures 4

56
 IJCA Special Issue on “Mobile Ad-hoc Networks”
MANETs, 2010

6. REFERENCES
[1]Charles E. Perkins et. all, Mobile Ad Hoc Networking
Working Group, Ad hoc On-Demand Distance Vector (AODV)
Routing,http://www.ietf.org/internet-drafts/draft-ietf-manet-
aodv-12.txt.
[2]Andreas Kopsel, Jean-Pierre Ebert, A Performance
Comparision of Point and Distributed Coordination Function
of an IEEE 802.11 WLAN in the presence of Real-Time
Requirements, Proc. of 7th Intl. Workshop on Mobile
Multimedia Communications (MoMuC2000), October 23-26,
2002.
[3] Shugong Xu, Tarek Saadawi Does IEEE 802.11 MAC
Protocol Work Well in Multihop Wireless Ad Hoc Networks?,
IEEE Communications Magazine, p.130-137, June 2001.
[4] J. Deng, and Z. J. Haas, Dual Busy Tone Multiple Access
(DBTMA): A New Medium Access Control for Packet Radio
Networks, IEEE ICUPC’98, Florence, Italy, October 5-9,
1998.
Figure 6 Operation of Dual MAC
[5] A. Nasipuri, and S. R. Das. A Multichannel CSMA protocol
for multi-hop wireless networks, Proc. of IEEE Wireless
5. CONCLUSION Communications and Networking Conference (WCNC’99),
The design of a MAC that meets the demand of a multihop September 1999.
wireless network is great challenge. The restrictions like limited
bandwidth, low power, and limited transmission range make this
challenge even greater. Further, the hidden and exposed node
problem offer even more difficulties by increasing the chance of
collision. In this work, we have investigated the usefulness of
IEEE 802.11 MAC protocol using the PCF and DCF
mechanisms. We find that without modifications, the PCF and
DCF are not very useful in multihop networks. The dual MAC
was designed to eliminate exposed and hidden node problems in
the central region of a centralized multihop network.

57