Wireless Medium Access Control

Protocols
CS 851 Seminar
University of Virginia
www.cs.virginia.edu/~cs851-2/course.html

1
 Why Need MAC ?
Wireless medium is an open, shared, and broadcast medium
Multiple nodes may access the medium at the same time

A C

B D

Medium Access Control Protocol:

Define rules to allow distributed nodes to communicate with each
other in an orderly and efficiently manner

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 Ideal MAC Protocol
Limited Delay
High Throughput
Fairness
Stability
Scalability
Robustness against channel fading
Low power consumption
Support for multimedia

3
 Wireless MAC Issues
Half-Duplex Operation
Time Varying Channel
Burst Channel Errors
Location Dependent Carrier Sensing
Hidden Terminal
Exposed Terminal
Capture

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 Hidden Terminal Problem

Node B can communicate with A and C both

A and C cannot hear each other
When A transmits to B, C cannot detect the transmission
using the carrier sense mechanism
If C transmits to D, collision will occur at B

A B C D

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 Exposed Terminal Problem

Node C can communicate with B and D both

Node B can communicate with A and C
Node A cannot hear C
Node D can not hear B
When C transmits to D, B detect the transmission using the
carrier sense mechanism and postpone to transmit to A,
even though such transmission will not cause collision

A X B C D

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 Capture Effect
Power
Difference
Of A and
D signals

A D B C

A and D transmit simultaneously to B, the signal

strength received by B from D is much higher than
that from A, and Ds transmission can be decoded
without errors. This will result unfair sharing of
bandwidth.

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Classification of Wireless MAC Protocols

Wireless MAC Protocols

Distributed Mac Centralized MAC

Protocols Protocols

Random Guaranteed
access access

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 Distributed MAC Protocols
Collision avoidance mechanisms
Collision avoidance with out-of-band signaling
Collision avoidance with in-band control messages
Two distributed random access protocols
DFWMAC: Distributed Foundation Wireless MAC (used in IEEE
802.11)
EY-NPMA: Elimination Yield-Nonpreemptive Priority Multiple
Access (used in HyperLan)

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 Centralized MAC Protocols
Work for centralized wireless networks

Base station has explicit control for who and when to access the
medium

All nodes can hear from and talk to base station

All communications go through the base station

The arbitration and complexity are in base station

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MACA: A New Channel Access
Method for Packet Radio
Phil Karn 1990

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 Goals , New Ideas, and Main
Contributions
Goals:
Try to overcome hidden & exposed terminal problems
New idea:
Reserve the channel before sending data packet
Minimize the cost of collision (control packet is much smaller than
data packet)
Main Contribution:
A three-way handshake MAC protocol : MACA

CSMA/CA MA/CA MACA

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 Fundamental Assumptions
Symmetry
A can hear from B B can hear from A
No capture
No channel fading
Packet error only due to collision
Data packets and control packets are transmitted in the
same channel

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 Three-Way Handshake
A sends Ready-to-Send (RTS)
B responds with Clear-to-Send (CTS)
A sends DATA PACKET
RTS and CTS announce the duration of the data transfer
Nodes overhearing RTS keep quiet for some time to allow A to receive CTS
Nodes overhearing CTS keep quiet for some time to allow B to receive data
CTS (10)
packet
CTS: Request
RTS: Clear ToTo
Send
Send DATA
RTS (10)

A
C
E

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 More Details for MACA
A sends out RTS and set a timer and waits for CTS
If A receives CTS before timer go to zero, OK
Otherwise, A assumes there is a collision at B
Double the backoff counter interval
Randomly pick up a timer from [1,backoff counter]
Send next RTS after timer go to zero
B sends out CTS, then set a timer and waits for data packet
If data packet arrives before timer go to zero, OK
Otherwise, B can do other things
C overhears As RTS, set a timer which is long enough to allow A to receive
CTS. After the timer goes to zero, C can do other things
D overhears Bs CTS, set a timer which is long enough to allow B to receive
data packet.
E overhears As RTS and Bs CTS, set a timer which is long enough to allow B
to receive data packet.
RTS and CTS can also contain info to allow sender A to adjust power to reduce
interference
Note: no carrier sense
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 Hidden Terminal Problem Still Exists (1)
Data packet still might suffer collision
RTS

CTS
DATA
RTS

B
C

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 Hidden Terminal Problem Still Exists (2)
Data packet still might suffer collision
DA
CTTA
R S
CTS
RTS
DATA
RTS

B
C
E
A

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Exposed Terminal Problem Still Exists
Node C can not receive CTS
RTS
DATA
CTS
RTS
CTS

A
C

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 Summary
MACA did not solve hidden & exposed terminal problems
MACA did not provide specifications about parameters
What are RTS, CTS packet sizes ?
How to decide timers?
What is initial backoff window size?
A lot things need to do if using MACA

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MACAW: A Media Access Protocol
for Wireless Lans

V. Bharghavan, A. Demers, S. Shenker, and L. Zhang (Sigcomm 1994)

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 Goals, New Ideas, and Main
Contributions
Goals:
This paper refined and extended MACA
New idea: Information sharing
Modified control messages
Four-way handshake (reliable, recover at MAC layer)
Five-way handshake (relieve exposed terminal problem)
RRTS (unfairness)
Modified back-off algorithms
Multiplicative increase and linear decrease (MILD)
Synchronize back-off counter using piggyback message
Multiple stream model (V-MAC)
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 Revisit Hidden Terminal Problem
Data packet still may suffer collision
To recover packet loss at transport layer too slow
Recover at MAC layer is more fast
Need ACK

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 Four-Way Handshake
Sender sends Ready-to-Send (RTS)
Receiver responds with Clear-to-Send (CTS)
Sender sends DATA PACKET
Receiver acknowledge with ACK
RTS and CTS announce the duration of the transfer
Nodes overhearing RTS/CTS keep quiet for that duration
Sender will retransmit RTS if no ACK is received
If ACK is sent out, but not received by sender, after receiving new RTS, receiver returns ACK instead of
CTS for new RTS
ACK
CTS(T)
CTS: Request
RTS: Clear ToTo
Send
Send DATA
RTS(T)

destination

source

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Comparison with ACK and without ACK

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 Revisit Exposed Terminal Problem
RTS/CTS/DATA/ACK can not solve exposed terminal
problem
When overhearing RTS, the node needs to wait longer
enough to allow the data packet being completely
transmitted even it does not overhear CTS
To relieve exposed terminal problem,
Let exposed terminal know the DATA packet does be transmitted
Extra message DS (data send)

Five Handshaking to let exposed terminal know how long

it should wait

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 Five-Way Handshake
Sender sends Ready-to-Send (RTS)
Receiver responds with Clear-to-Send (CTS)
Sender sends DATA SENDING (DS)
Sender sends DATA PACKET
Receiver acknowledge with ACK
RTS and CTS announce the duration of the
transfer
Nodes overhearing RTS/CTS keep quiet for that
duration CTS
ACK
CTS:
RTS: Clear
DS:RequestToTo
Send
Data Sending
Send DATA
RTS
DS

A
C

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Comparison with DS and without DS

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Comparison with DS and without DS

CT
R TS
S

ACK
CTS
DATA
RTS

P2 B2
P1

B1

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 Unfairness
Using RTS/CTS/DATA/ACK or RTS/CTS/DS/DATA/ACK might cause unfairness
A sends data to B; D sends data to C
A and D have enough data to send
C can hears from B and D, but not A
B can hear from A and C, but not D
A is in luck and gets the channel
D sends RTS and times out
Backoff window for D repeatedly doubles
For the next transmission:
A picks a random number from a smaller window
Unequal probability of channel access
Throughput for flow A B > 90 %
RTS
Throughput for flow D C ~ 0%

CTS
ACK
DATA
RTS

B C
D

A
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 Request for RTS (RRTS)

Try to solve unfairness by having C do the contending for D

RRTS: Request for RTS

RTS
ACK
CTS RR
TS
DATA
RTS

B
C
A D

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Comparison with RRTS and without RRTS (1)

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Comparison with RRTS and without RRTS (2)

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 Multiple Stream Model (V-MAC)
MAC

MAC
MAC

MAC
Node Node
Single Stream MAC Multiple Stream MAC

Single stream model merge traffic from different flows into a mixed
stream and uses a single MAC
Multiple stream model uses multiple MAC (one flow one MAC) to
achieve fairness
This idea was used by Intersil Company to proposed a new MAC
for IEEE 802.11e in 2001

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Comparison V-MAC and MAC

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 Backoff Algorithms
When collision occurs, node A pick up a random number T from
[1,Bo], then retransmits RTS after T time unit

How to determine Bo
After each collision Bo_new = Fun_inc(Bo_old)
After each successful transmission Bo_new = Fun_dec(Bo_old)

Binary exponential backoff (BEB) algorithm

Fun_inc(Bo_old)=min{2*Bo_old, Bo_max}
Fun_dec(B_old)=Bo_min

Multiplicative increase linear decease (MILD)

Fun_inc(Bo_old)=min{1.5*Bo_old, Bo_max}
Fun_dec(B_old)=max{Bo_old -1, Bo_min}
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 Information Sharing in Backoff
Algorithms

When a node sends a packet, it embeds its current backoff

counter in the packet header. Other nodes which overhears the
packet copy the value as itself backoff counter

Key idea: all nodes have the same backoff counter to achieve
fairness

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Comparison BEB and BEB-Copy

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Comparison BEP-COPY and MILD-Copy

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Evaluation of MACAW

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Evaluation of MACAW

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 Open Problems

How to design a good backoff algorithm?

Adaptive MAC to achieve fairness in ad-hoc networks

Do upper layer operations need to tightly relate to MAC?

Reliable multicast MAC in ad-hoc networks

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Evaluation of MACAW

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Evaluation of MACAW

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Per-Destination Backoff

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 What Are We Going to Learn?
Understand and appreciate fundamental principles in
Wireless Medium Access Control Protocols

Basic theory

A real MAC protocol: IEEE 802.11b (next week)

Open problems

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 Hidden Terminal Problem Still Exists
Data packet still might suffer collision
RTS

CTS
DATA
RTS

B
C

Four-way handshake (add ACK message)

Sender will redo RTS/CTS/DATA/ACK if no ACK is received
If ACK is sent out, but not received by sender, after receiving new RTS,
receiver returns ACK instead of CTS for new RTS
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 Request for RTS (RRTS)

CSMA/CA with binary

exponential backoff
IEEE 802.11 data
transmission is accomplished
via a four-way handshake
CTS
CTS:Request
RTS: Clear ToTo
Send
Send DATA
RTS

destination

source

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 Some Background
CSMA/CD (carrier sense multiple access/ collision detection)
Every node senses the carrier before transmitting
If the carrier is not clear, the node defers transmission for a specified
period. Otherwise, transmits
While transmitting, the sender is listening to carrier and sender stops
transmitting if collision has been detected

Due to hidden & exposed terminal problem

Contention/collision will occur at receiver side
Carrier sense (send side) approach is inappropriate for wireless
networks

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