A route-aware MAC for wireless multihop networks with a convergecast traffic pattern

Fabrice Theoleyre
2011 Computer Networks  
The MAC layer for multihop wireless networks has drawn considerable research attention in the last few years. We focus here on the wireless multihop networks with a convergecast traffic pattern: the whole traffic is destined to a sink/gateway. We propose first to select a k-tree core, i.e. a sub-tree of the shortest paths to the sink containing exactly k-leaves. In particular, these k-tree core nodes are chosen among the nodes that must forward most traffic. We design C-MAC, an optimized MAC
more » ... er for this kind of topology. C-MAC is derived from the CSMA-CA like approaches and consists in giving a larger priority to the k-tree core nodes. Moreover, a proper coordination among the k-tree core nodes permits to limit collisions among them. Simulation results show that organizing the transmissions in C-MAC permits to achieve a much larger throughput than the original IEEE 802.11 -like protocol it is based on. This simple solution can be adapted to most CSMA-CA like protocols, and is particularly relevant for WSN or WMN in which traffic is mostly destined to the sink/gateway.
doi:10.1016/j.comnet.2010.10.018 fatcat:cncwnkpwsfclnjbmhtyjs54m7q