Distributed Medium Access Control for High Data Rate Wireless Personal Area Networks

Ultra wide-band (UWB) wireless communications technology has many merits to make it a favorable candidate for PHY of high data rate wireless personal area networks (WPAN). Support mobility and QoS for isochronous streaming are two core requirements for WPAN applications. Unfortunately not much research has been done on media access control (MAC) that is specifically designed for UWB in high data rate WPAN to address mobility support yet. An inefficient MAC will limit full potential of UWB technology. This paper introduces three types of MAC for high data rate WPAN and investigates interference problems in multiple access in these MACs. We also outline issues for future research in distributed MAC to support mobility. We hope this paper can stimulate more research on distributed MAC