Advanced Computer Network

Subject Guide –Dr.Aabha Patil

Presented By - Karthik Nadar
 INTRODUCTION

 Nodes in an ad hoc wireless network share a common broadcast

radio channel.
 Since the radio spectrum is limited, the bandwidth available for
communication in such networks is also limited.
 Access to this shared medium should be controlled in such a
manner that all nodes receive a reasonable share of the available
bandwidth, and that the bandwidth is utilized efficiently.
 Since the characteristics of the wireless medium are completely
different from those of the wired medium, and since ad hoc
wireless networks need to address unique issues (such as node
mobility, limited bandwidth availability, error-prone broadcast
channel, hidden and exposed terminal problems, and power
constraints) that are not applicable to wired networks, a
different set of protocols is required for controlling access to the
shared medium in such networks.
 ISSUES IN DESIGNING A MAC PROTOCOL FOR AD HOC
WIRELESS NETWORKS
1. Bandwidth Efficiency
2. Quality of Service Support
3. Synchronization
4. Hidden and Exposed Terminal Problems
5. Error-Prone Shared Broadcast Channel
6. Distributed Nature/Lack of Central Coordination
7. Mobility of Nodes
 ISSUES IN DESIGNING A MAC PROTOCOL FOR AD HOC
WIRELESS NETWORKS
Bandwidth Efficiency:
 The MAC protocol must be designed in such a way that the
limited bandwidth is utilized in an efficient manner.
 The control overhead involved must be kept as minimal as
possible.
 Bandwidth efficiency can be defined as the ratio of the
bandwidth used for actual data transmission to the total available
bandwidth. The MAC protocol must try to maximize this
bandwidth efficiency.
 ISSUES IN DESIGNING A MAC PROTOCOL FOR AD HOC
WIRELESS NETWORKS
Quality of Service Support:
 Due to the inherent nature of the ad hoc wireless network,
where nodes are usually mobile most of the time, providing
quality of service (QoS) support to data sessions in such
networks is very difficult.
 Bandwidth reservation made at one point of time may
become invalid once the node moves out of the region where
the reservation was made.
 QoS support is essential for supporting time-critical traffic
sessions such as in military communications.
 The MAC protocol for ad hoc wireless networks that are to
be used in such real-time applications must have some kind
of a resource reservation mechanism that takes into
consideration the nature of the wireless channel and the
mobility of nodes.
 ISSUES IN DESIGNING A MAC PROTOCOL FOR AD HOC
WIRELESS NETWORKS
Synchronization:
 The MAC protocol must take into consideration the
synchronization between nodes in the network.
 Synchronization is very important for bandwidth (time slot)
reservations by nodes.
 Exchange of control packets may be required for achieving
time synchronization among nodes.
 The control packets must not consume too much of network
bandwidth.
 ISSUES IN DESIGNING A MAC PROTOCOL FOR AD HOC
WIRELESS NETWORKS
Hidden and Exposed Terminal Problems
 The hidden terminal problem refers to the collision of
packets at a receiving node due to the simultaneous
transmission of those nodes that are not within the direct
transmission range of the sender, but are within the
transmission range of the receiver.
 Collision occurs when both nodes transmit packets at the
same time without knowing about the transmission of each
other.
 For example, consider Figure , Here, if both node S1 and node S2
transmit to node R1 at the same time, their packets collide at node
R1. This is because both nodes S1 and S2 are hidden from each other
as they are not within the direct transmission range of each other and
hence do not know about the presence of each other.
 ISSUES IN DESIGNING A MAC PROTOCOL FOR AD HOC
WIRELESS NETWORKS
• The exposed terminal problem refers to the inability of a
node, which is blocked due to transmission by a nearby
transmitting node, to transmit to another node.
• Consider the example in Figure ,Here, if a transmission from node S1
to another node R1 is already in progress, node S3 cannot transmit to
node R2, as it concludes that its neighbor node S1 is in transmitting
mode and hence it should not interfere with the on-going
transmission.
The hidden and exposed terminal problems significantly reduce the
throughput of a network when the traffic load is high. It is therefore
desirable that the MAC protocol be free from the hidden and exposed
terminal problems.
 ISSUES IN DESIGNING A MAC PROTOCOL FOR AD HOC
WIRELESS NETWORKS
Error-Prone Shared Broadcast Channel
 Another important factor in the design of a MAC protocol is the
broadcast nature of the radio channel, that is, transmissions
made by a node are received by all nodes within its direct
transmission range.
 When a node is receiving data, no other node in its
neighborhood, apart from the sender, should transmit.
 A node should get access to the shared medium only when its
transmissions do not affect any ongoing session. Since multiple
nodes may contend for the channel simultaneously, the
possibility of packet collisions is quite high in wireless networks.
 A MAC protocol should grant channel access to nodes in such a
manner that collisions are minimized. Also, the protocol should
ensure that all nodes are treated fairly with respect to
bandwidth allocation.
 ISSUES IN DESIGNING A MAC PROTOCOL FOR AD HOC
WIRELESS NETWORKS
Distributed Nature/Lack of Central Coordination
 Ad hoc wireless networks do not have centralized
coordinators.
 In cellular networks, for example, the base stations act as
central coordinating nodes and allocate bandwidth to the
mobile terminals. But this is not possible in an ad hoc
network, where nodes keep moving continuously. Therefore,
nodes must be scheduled in a distributed fashion for gaining
access to the channel. This may require exchange of control
information.
 The MAC protocol must make sure that the additional
overhead, in terms of bandwidth consumption, incurred due
to this control information exchange is not very high.
 ISSUES IN DESIGNING A MAC PROTOCOL FOR AD HOC
WIRELESS NETWORKS
Mobility of Nodes
 This is a very important factor affecting the performance
(throughput) of the protocol. Nodes in an ad hoc wireless
network are mobile most of the time. The bandwidth
reservations made or the control information exchanged may
end up being of no use if the node mobility is very high.
 The MAC protocol obviously has no role to play in
influencing the mobility of the nodes. The protocol design
must take this mobility factor into consideration so that the
performance of the system is not significantly affected due to
node mobility.
CLASSIFICATIONS OF MAC PROTOCOLS
 CLASSIFICATIONS OF MAC PROTOCOLS

MAC protocols for ad hoc wireless networks can be

classified into several categories based on various criteria such
as initiation approach, time synchronization, and reservation
approaches
 Contention-based protocols
 Contention-based protocols with reservation mechanisms
 Contention-based protocols with scheduling mechanisms
 Contention-Based Protocols with Reservation
Mechanisms
 Ad hoc wireless networks sometimes may need to support real-time traffic,
which requires QoS guarantees to be provided.
 In contention-based protocols, nodes are not guaranteed periodic access to
the channel. Hence they cannot support real-time traffic. In order to
support such traffic, certain protocols have mechanisms for reserving
bandwidth a priori. Such protocols can provide QoS support to time-
sensitive traffic sessions.
 These protocols can be further classified into two types:
• Synchronous protocols: Synchronous protocols require time synchronization
among all nodes in the network, so that reservations made by a node are known
to other nodes in its neighborhood. Global time synchronization is generally
difficult to achieve.
• Asynchronous protocols: They do not require any global synchronization
among nodes in the network. These protocols usually use relative time
information for effecting reservations.
 Contention-Based Protocols with Reservation
Mechanisms
1. Distributed Packet Reservation Multiple Access Protocol (D-PRMA)
 It extends the centralized packet reservation multiple access (PRMA) scheme
into a distributed scheme that can be used in ad hoc wireless networks.
 PRMA was designed in a wireless LAN with a base station.
 D-PRMA extends PRMA protocol in a wireless LAN.
 D-PRMA is a TDMA-based scheme.
 The channel is divided into fixed- and equal-sized frames along the time axis.
 Contention-Based Protocols with Reservation
Mechanisms
Distributed Packet Reservation Multiple Access Protocol (D-PRMA)
 Contention-Based Protocols with Reservation
Mechanisms
Distributed Packet Reservation Multiple Access Protocol (D-PRMA)
Each frame is composed of s slots and each slot consists of m minislots. Each
minislot is further divided into two control fields, RTS/BI and CTS/BI.
 These control fields are used for slot reservation and for overcoming the
hidden terminal problem. All nodes having packets ready for transmission
contend for the first minislot of each slot.
 The remaining (m-1) minislots are granted to the node that wins the
contention.
 Also, the same slot in each subsequent frame can be reserved for this winning
terminal until it completes its packet transmission session.
 Within a reserved slot, communication between the source and receiver
nodes takes by means of either time division duplexing (TDD) or frequency
division duplexing (FDD).
 Any node that wants to transmit packets has to first reserve slots.
 A certain period at the beginning of each minislot is reserved for carrier
sensing. In order to prioritize nodes transmitting voice traffic over nodes
transmitting normal data traffic, two rules are followed in D-PRMA
 Contention-Based Protocols with Reservation
Mechanisms
Distributed Packet Reservation Multiple Access Protocol (D-PRMA)
1st rule-> voice nodes are allowed to start contending from minislot 1 with
probability p=1.Others with p<1
2nd rule -> only if the node winning the minislot contention is a voice node, it is
permitted to reserve the same slot in each subsequent frame until the end of
the session
 In order to avoid the hidden terminal problem, all nodes hearing the CTS sent
by the receiver are not allowed to transmit during the remaining period of that
same slot
 In order to avoid the exposed terminal problem, a node hearing the RTS but
not the CTS is still allowed to transmit
 Requirement 1 -> when a node wins the contention in minislot 1, other
terminals must be prevented from using any of the remaining (m-1) minislots in
the same slot for contention
 Requirement 2 -> when a slot is reserved in subsequent frames, other nodes
should be prevented from contending for those reserved slots
 D-PRMA is more suited for voice traffic than for data traffic applications
 Contention-Based Protocols with Reservation
Mechanisms
MACA with Piggy-Backed Reservation
 Provide real-time traffic support in multi-hop wireless networks.
 Based on the MACAW protocol with non-persistent CSMA.
The main components of MACA/PR are
1. A MAC protocol
2. A reservation protocol
3. A QoS routing protocol
 Differentiates real-time packets from the best-effort packets.
 Provide guaranteed BW support for real-time packets.
 Provides reliable transmission of best efforts packets
Contention-Based Protocols with Reservation
Mechanisms
 Contention-Based Protocols with Reservation
Mechanisms
Time is divided into slots
 Slots are defined by the reservations made at nodes
 They are asynchronous in nature with varying lengths
 Each node in the network maintains a reservation table (RT) that records all
the reserved transmit and receive slots/windows of all nodes within its
transmission range.
 The sender is assumed to transmit real-time packets at certain regular
intervals, say, every CYCLE time Period.
 The first data packet of the session is transmitted in the usual manner.
The source node first sends an RTS packet, for which the receiver responds
with a CTS packet.
Now the source node sends the first DATA packet of the real-time session
 Contention-Based Protocols with Reservation
Mechanisms
 Reservation information for the next DATA packet to be transmitted is piggy-
backed on this current DATA packet.
On receiving this DATA packet, the receiver node updates its reservation table
with the piggy –backed reservation information
 It then sends ACK packet back to the source.
 Receiver node piggy-backs the reservation confirmation information on the
ACK packet.
 Slot reservation information maintained in the reservation tables is refreshed
every cycle.
Thus, MACA/PR is an efficient bandwidth reservation protocol that can support
real-time traffic sessions.
Advantage - it does not require global synchronization among nodes.
Drawback - a free slot can be reserved only if it can fit the entire RTS-CTS-
DATA-ACK exchange