Study Of MAC Technology Based On MIMO Link In Ad Hoc Networks

Media Access Control (MAC) protocol is one of the most important parts in Ad Hoc networks, which directly affects the overall network performance. Recently, many new technologies have emerged. Multiple Input Multiple Output (MIMO) technology can enhance capacity and frequency spectrum utilization efficiency of communication system while maintaining bandwidth. Therefore, the design of MAC protocols based on MIMO technology is very important for improving the performance of Ad Hoc networks.To effectively combine Ad Hoc networks with MIMO technology, a distributed MAC protocol for Ad Hoc networks with MIMO links is proposed. It can effectively utilize the characteristics of MIMO links and maximize the number of sending links by receiving more RTS packets before replying a CTS packet. In the proposed protocol, the receiving nodes can determine the maximum allowable number of data streams depending on the number of received RTS packets and the number of antennas at the receiver itself. Therefore, it can enhance the network throughput by allowing simultaneous multiple communications in a single collision domain. The saturation throughput of Ad Hoc networks is also derived. The simulation results show that the network throughput will be significantly improved by our proposed scheme as compared with other schemes.