Distributed flow-based scheduling in multi-hop ad hoc networks

Shared channel contention-based MAC protocols, such as IEEE 802.11, are popular in ad hoc networks because of their ease of implementation. However, these contention-based MAC protocols do not coordinate between nodes at different hops within a multi-hop flow. This results in channel resource and node transmission power wastage and overall system throughput degradation. In this paper we present a novel distributed flow-based scheduling (DFBS) scheme that coordinates between neighbor links of a multi-hop flow. As demonstrated by the simulation results, DFBS achieves higher throughput and improves the transmission efficiency when traffic load is relatively high.