An Adaptive Slotted-Contention-Based MAC Protocol for Ad-hoc Networks

Due to flexibility, ad-hoc networking is an attractive structure for future emerging networks, such as Internet of Things (IoT), wireless sensor networks and vehicular networks. However, due to infrastructure-less, optimizing transmission control to avoid collision in ad-hoc networks is challenging. In this paper, we proposed an adaptive slotted-contention-based media access control (A-SCMAC) protocol which can adapt to network dynamics so that it can reduce collision and improve throughput. With A-SCMAC, each time slot consists of two periods: reservation period (RP) and transmission period (TP). By observing the channel outcomes in the RP the nodes learn the network status such as the number of nodes who have packets to transmit and control the transmission optimally for reserving the TP. Simulation results show that the proposed A-SCMAC can achieve the maximum throughput even the network traffic load changes.