HCRBT: A Dual-Busy-Tone-Assisted MAC Protocol with Channel Reservation for Ad Hoc Networks

A new asynchronous medium access control (MAC) protocol using dual busy tone for channel reservation, called HCRBT, is proposed. Compared with legacy channel reservation MAC protocols, where channel reservation information (CRI) is broadcasted by piggybacking it in a packet, HCRBT improves the reliability of channel reservation by using dual busy tone. In HCRBT, CRI is broadcasted by busy tones rather than packets, so that the receipt of CRI can not be affected by packet reception errors, which are caused by either channel transmission errors or packet collisions with neighboring nodes. Simulations show that HCRBT can significantly reduce the frame error rate (FER) for real-time traffic, especially in scenarios with either error-prone wireless channels or heavy traffic loads.