Design Of Reconfigurable MAC Protocol Based On Hardware/software Co-design

Ad Hoc network is widely used in military and commercial field, and increasing attentions have been drawn due to convenience, flexibility, robustness as well as invulnerability. As a key technology in this area, media access control (MAC) protocols control how the nodes access the wireless network and significantly impact the performance and efficiency of Ad Hoc network. Consequently, the design of MAC protocols has become hot spot in these days. However, MAC protocols mostly researched on IEEE 802.11 standard of commercial network card in Ad hoc network, have small transport range and bad programmability. So it is important to design reconfigurable MAC protocols, which have independent intellectual property rights and can adapt to real network environment with complex variety.In this thesis, the research state of MAC protocols in Ad Hoc network are first introduced, then the co-design of hardware and software and reconfigurable technology are used to realize the MAC protocol. The main research productions of this thesis are as follows:1. An embedded system for MAC protocol development based on ARM and FPGA has been set up. The structure of this system is not only suitable for the co-design of hardware and software, but also is propitious for the realization of reconfiguration. It provides a hardware and software platform for the implementation of MAC protocols.2. A reconfigurable framework of MAC protocols implementation has been designed. According to the principle in the co-design of hardware and software, the framework is divided into user interface module, physical layer interface control module, basic communication module and MAC protocol module. The modules mentioned above provide transparent data transfer channel for the MAC protocol module.3. The MAC protocol based on TDMA has been designed and implemented, and is proved to be effective by practical test. The thesis describes functions of the MAC protocol The test based on the actual case of three nodes validates rationality of the MAC protocol. In addition, it is proved that the hardware platform and the framework of the reconfigurable MAC protocol are feasible.4. The MAC protocol based on CSMA/CA and the hybrid MAC protocol based on TDMA/CSMA are proposed. The carrier sense mechanism is important for the MAC protocol based on CSMA/CA. The hybrid MAC protocol integrates the advantages of TDMA and CSMA. It sets up the slot of network by TDMA and attends the competition of slot by CSMA. These MAC protocols provide convenience to expand the system in the future.