PIDC - towards an ideal MAC protocol for multi-hop wireless LANs

Solving the "hidden terminal" and "exposed terminal" problems in multi-hop wireless LANs are currently of great significance, since solving such problems promise to decrease the collision probability and increase the network throughput. In the most recent proposals for MAC protocol design, there are mainly two directions reported in presenting possible solutions: the applies a preceding dialogue either in single channel or multi-channel systems, while the other uses additional busy tone signal. In this paper, we propose an innovative MAC protocol, namely pair-wise ID countdown (PIDC) for multi-hop wireless LAN. PIDC stands as a novel direction that is different from existing solutions, and which solves the hidden and exposed terminal problems completely without relying on either a busy tone or a preceding dialogue. Furthermore, PIDC can achieve 100% collision-free broadcast or multicast, and fair media access with high network throughput. PIDC can also easily prioritize packets of different classes or elapsed time, effectively supporting differentiated services in multi-hop wireless LANs.