Abstract:

The next-generation wireless technologies, e.g., 802.11n and 802.15.3a, offer a physical-layer speed at least an-order-of-magniture higher than the current standards. However, direct application of current MACs leads to high protocol overhead and significant throughput degradation. In this paper, we propose ADCA, a high-performance MAC that works with high-capacity physical layer. ADCA exploits two ideas of adaptive batch transmission and opportunistic selection of high-rate hosts to simultaneously reduce overhead and improve aggregate throughput. It seeks to provide high-rate hosts temporal fair share of the channel similar to the single-rate IEEE 802.11, and low-rate hosts proportional temporal fairness in long term. Simulations show that the ADCA design increases the throughput by 112% and reduces average delay by 54% compared with the legacy DCF. It delivers more than 100 Mbps MAC-layer throughput, compared with 35Mbps by the legacy MAC.