Distributed Interference-aware Medium Access Control for IEEE 802.15.7 Visible Light Communications

Eui-Jik Kim, Jung-Hyok Kwon, Dongwan Kim, Yongseok Lim
2018 Sensors and materials  
Keywords: backoff exponent adaptation, CSMA/CA, IEEE 802.15.7 VLC, medium access control, VLC interferer discovery In this paper, we present a distributed interference-aware medium access control (DI-MAC) for IEEE 802.15.7 visible light communications (VLCs), which improves the spatial efficiency of VLC devices deployed in specific service areas. The DI-MAC adaptively adjusts the backoff exponent (BE) of each VLC device by considering the number of adjacent VLC devices causing the interference,
more » ... which are called VLC interferers. Therefore, it reduces interference between the VLC devices and unnecessary waiting time for channel access. To this end, the DI-MAC conducts VLC interferer discovery by using the IDs of VLC interferers obtained via hello messages from adjacent VLC devices and then performing a BE adaptation to determine the BE of each VLC device based on the number of VLC interferers. An experimental simulation was conducted to evaluate the performance of the DI-MAC, and the results show that the DI-MAC obtains a higher aggregate throughput performance than the existing IEEE 802.15.7 VLC.
doi:10.18494/sam.2018.1862 fatcat:2cbqzxmbhja7zaobxsbhd7tfpy