Two way opportunistic MAC protocol for Ad Hoc networks

Abstract

In this paper, network coding is introduced in relay based MAC protocols for bidirectional traffic to evaluate the performance in terms of throughput and energy. The idea of proposed scheme is to use high data rate nodes to work as relays for the low data rate nodes and to achieve higher throughput and reduce the energy consumption. In addition, this scheme exploits the opportunity for two way communication which is an inherent feature of 802.11 based systems. This is achieved by using network coding at the relay. This results in 1) using relay for two way transmission which lowers overall blocking time and contention due to faster transmission, 2) reducing unnecessary overhead and overhearing to reduce the energy consumption. In this work, throughput and energy gains are quantified by using network coding.