Inband busytone for robust medium access control in pervasive networking

In this paper, we propose inband busy tone (IB) for interference-resilient medium access control (MAC) in next-generation wireless networks. We present inband busytone-based protocols including CSMA with inband busytone (CSMA/IB) and receiver prohibition multiple access with inband busytone (RPMA/IB). Advantages of CSMA/BC and RPMA over IEEE 802.11/11e include collision freedom/controllability, better interference robustness, higher energy efficiency, as well as being not vulnerable to collisions of RTS/CTS messages. In particular, inband busytone-based devices are robust against interference from legacy IEEE 802.11/11e devices or other legacy/future CSMA-based devices, and can avoid disturbing such legacy devices. This makes inband busytone-based MAC protocols backward-compatible with IEEE 802.11/11e, a critical advantage over previous busytone-based MAC protocols.