Design and analysis of a distributed and fair access (DFA) MAC protocol for multihop wireless networks

The Distributed and Fair Access (DFA) protocol is proposed for multihop wireless networks. The proposed protocol eliminates several problems existed in the original binary countdown (BCD) algorithm, such as lack of fairness, data collision and the inefficiency of channel usage, by introducing hidden station elimination and second chance channel contention that are suitable for multihop networks. Further in this paper, numerical analysis of modeling the behavior of DFA in multihop networks are presented. With low computational complexity, the proposed model estimates the transmission probability and the channel throughput. In our analysis, the data transmission influenced by the remote stations is carefully monitored and analyzed. Our extensive simulation results have verified the proposed model and demonstrated the superior performance of DFA comparing with other existing MAC protocols including the IEEE 802.11 and SYN-MAC. Equipped with many attractive features such as high efficiency, fairness, simplicity and robustness, DFA can be served as a promising alternative MAC protocol for the distributed wireless networks.