Frequency-code domain contention in multi-antenna multicarrier wireless networks

Coordination among users is an inevitable but time-consuming operation in wireless networks. It severely limit the system performance when the data rate is high. We present FC-MAC, a novel MAC protocol that can complete a contention within one contention slot over a joint frequency-code domain. When a node takes part in the contention, it generates randomly a contention vector (CV), which is a binary sequence of length equal to the number of available orthogonal frequency division multiplexing (OFDM) subcarriers. In FC-MAC, different user is assigned with a distinct signature (i.e., PN sequence). A node sends the signature at specific subcarriers and uses the sequence of the ON/OFF states of all subcarriers to indicate the chosen CV. Meanwhile, every node uses the redundant antennas to detect the CVs of other nodes. The node with the minimum CV becomes the winner. The experimental results show that, the collision probability of FC-MAC is as low as 0.05% when the network has 100 nodes. In comparison with IEEE 802.11, contention time is reduced by 50-80% and the throughput gain is up to 200%.