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Advance Wireless Networks
Medium Access Techniques II
Dr. Zara Hamid
Location-Dependent Carrier Sensing
• CS depends on location of the node
• Transmitter performs CS
• Know the state of the channel at transmitter
• Cannot determine the state of the channel at the receiver
• In reality, collision does not occur at the transmitter; it
occurs at the receiver due to multiple received
singnals.
• CS at transmitter causes following problems
• Hidden Nodes
• Exposed Nodes
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Hidden and Exposed Terminals
• A wants to transmit
to B.
• C senses channel – no
idea A is transmitting.
• C initiates
A B
transmission to B.
F
C • Collision at B. – C and
A are hidden from each
D other.
• D could potentially transmit to E but does not – senses A’s
carrier. D is exposed to A. Loss in throughput.
MACA : Multiple Access with Collision
Avoidance
RTS
A B
CTS D
C
• Exchange of two short messages – Request to Send (RTS),
and Clear to Send (CTS).
• They are fixed size – when A wishes to transmit to B, it sends
an RTS message.
• RTS message contains duration of proposed transmission
• If B knows that the channel is free, it responds with a CTS
message. (CTS also contains duration of proposed
communication)
•
RTS
A B
CTS D
C
• Any station that hears the RTS message, defers all
communication for some time until the associated CTS message
has been finished.
• A CTS message defers communication for the duration of the
time indicated in the CTS message.
• When A is transmitting data, C can go ahead and access the
channel.
Some effects in MACA
• Node B’s CTS message may not be heard by A.
• B found that the channel was already busy.
• RTS packet might collide.
• If A does not receive a CTS, it times-out and schedules the
packet for retransmission.
• MACA uses the binary exponential back-off algorithm to
select the retransmission time.
• B’s CTS message collides at C.
• This would cause C to be unaware of the pending
communication between nodes A and B.
Details of Exponential Back-Off, etc.
•If a CTS message is received then BO is set to BOmin .
• If a CTS is missed, then, if the previous BO was BOold, the
new BO, BOnew is set to BOnew = Min ( 2 x BOold, BOmax).
• BOmin and BOmax represent the minimum and maximum back-
off intervals.
Unfairness due to Binary Exponential Back-Off
• Let us consider two nodes contending for channel bandwidth in
some vicinity e.g. D A and B A.
• If both B A and D A
require long term data transfer
and both B and D are heavily
loaded, then the one that starts
earlier captures the channel.
A B
• The other backs-off more
and more.
D • Similarly if one is heavily loaded
say B A and the other is not, B
A gets exclusive use until B is
done. Again because D backs off
E
more and more.
• Less Backed-Off Node Wins
MACAW Modification
• Include in packet header, the value of the back-off counter.
• Thus, whenever a node hears the packet, it copies the value
indicated into its own back-off counter.
• Thus, each node in the range of the transmitting node has the
same back-off counter.
• Really designed for Wireless LANs.
•
• MACAW also proposes to make the back-off more gentle !
• The current scheme results in widely fluctuating oscillations.
• Thus, decrease by one at the receipt of a CTS rather than starting all over
with BOmin.
• Also, instead of doubling the time-out when a CTS is missed, change it to
such that
BOnew = Min(1.5 BOold, BOmax).
• This helps in reducing number of fluctuations.
•They call this the “MILD” model.
Reliability in MACA
• Mobility (or fading) causes packets to be corrupted or lost.
• How is reliability ensured ?
• One could have reliability at the link level or end-to-end.
• In MACA, no concept of reliability at link level.
• If due to some reason packet is lost, MACA relies on a higher
layer (TCP) to make the recovery.
• Link level recovery is good if the links are not that stable –
wireless.
• In MACAW, an additional ACK message is included to provide
link layer reliability.
Reliability in MACAW
• The authors amend the RTS-CTS exchange to include a
fourth message which they call the ACK message.
• This provides some reliability – example if CTS message
collides at C and it initiates a message at the same time as A
does to B, then the data never reaches B.
•If ACK is not received due
to data loss, reschedule
retransmission.
B
A
F
• If data was indeed received
C and ACK lost, when RTS is
D sent for retransmission,
reply with ACK.
E
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The DS Message
• Another different approach of MACAW is an additional Data-Sending (DS)
packet to be sent by a node before transmission of actual DATA packet.
• The DS packet informs the overhearing stations that RTS-CTS exchange has
been successful and data transmission is about to begin.
• The overhearing stations defer all their transmissions till the Data and ACK
packets have to be exchanged.
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The RRTS Message
• A node receiving the RTS packet may not be able to
reply with its CTS packet if it is busy with another
transmission.
• That increases the back-off counter of the sender.
• To avoid the problem if a receiver of RTS cannot
reply with CTS packet immediately (being busy with
another transmission), it transmits RRTS packet to
the sender as soon as it becomes free.
• As a result, sender will transmit RTS packet as early
as possible
