A Multihop IEEE 802.11 MAC Protocol for Wireless Ad Hoc Networks

Routing and relaying are the two approaches to provide multihop connectivity in wireless ad hoc networks. In relaying, the switching or forwarding decisions take place at the MAC layer, while routing schemes make these decisions at the network layer. Routing is a widely researched and practiced solution, whereas relaying has not been adequately explored in wireless ad hoc networks. This paper argues that due to the specific nature of the wireless ad hoc networks and the MAC protocols for these networks, relaying is also a technically suitable option in these networks and has higher prospects in certain scenarios. This argument is supported by designing a multihop version of the IEEE 802.11 MAC protocol and comparing its performance with the AODV routing protocol. The analysis shows that the multihop 802.11 MAC can be implemented in a much simpler manner and it can achieve performance comparable with that of AODV.