Protocols for media access control and power control in wireless networks
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We present two protocols for ad hoc wireless networks, one for the media access control problem, and the other for the power control problem. For the media access control problem we present a protocol called SEEDEX which does not explicitly make reservations for packets, a la the IEEE 802.11 protocol, yet allows scheduling to minimize conflicts. The idea is to use known finite state machines at nodes which are driven by pseudo-random number generators. The seeds of these pseudo-random number generators are exchanged between nodes in a two hop neighborhood. A further refinement is a hybrid version, which employs SEEDEX only on the RTS-CTS handshake of the IEEE 802.11 protocol. This algorithm provides improved throughput-delay and delay jitter performance in an ns simulation. For the power control problem we first provide a frame-work for conceptualizing the problem. This leads us to propose a network layer approach to power control which consists of finding the least common network wide power level at which all nodes are connected. This can be shown to maximize the throughput traffic carrying capacity of the network. We then propose a feedback algorithm COMPOW which tunes to this minimum power level adaptively. We also propose a software architecture for integrating this into the OSI protocol stack. The new idea is to introduce a parallel analog of the hierarchical OSI layers into the network layer which still allows modularity, and usability with any routing table driven routing algorithm. We also describe our implementation, which takes advantage of the port demultiplexing service provided by the transport layer.
