TMAC: Timestamp-Ordered MAC for CSMA/CA Wireless Mesh Networks

We propose TMAC, a timestamp-ordered MAC protocol for Wireless Mesh Networks (WMNs). TMAC extends CSMA/CA by scheduling data packets based on their age. Prior to transmitting a data packet, a transmitter broadcasts a request control message appended with a timestamp to a selected list of neighbors. It can proceed with the transmission only if it receives a sufficient number of grant control messages from these neighbors. A grant message indicates that the associated data packet has the lowest timestamp of all the packets pending transmission at the local transmit queue. We demonstrate that a loose ordering of timestamps among neighboring nodes is sufficient for enforcing local fairness, subsequently leading to flow rate fairness in a multi-hop WMN. We show that TMAC can be implemented using the control frames in IEEE 802.11 stack, and thus can be easily integrated in existing 802.11-based WMNs. Our simulation results show that TMAC achieves excellent resource allocation fairness while maintaining over 90% of maximum link capacity in parking lot and large grid topologies.