An Adaptive and Efficient MAC Protocol for Wireless Mesh Networks: An Extension of Maca-P

Recently, Wireless Mesh Network (WMN) has emerged as a key technology for next generation wireless networking. However, a key challenge in WMN is the need for finding out an effective and adaptive MAC protocol so that frames can be transferred in mesh based environment which is different from typical wireless network. The performance of wireless networks depends highly on how the Medium Access Control (MAC) protocol is designed, since MAC protocols directly decide how the limited wireless resources are shared among existing nodes. The existing MAC protocol in IEEE 802.11 WLANs is not suitable for use in multi-hop networks. The MAC for WMN is concerned with more than one hop communications; is distributed and cooperative, and works for multipoint-to multipoint communications. Network self-organization is needed for the MAC. The major objective of this paper is to find out an effective solution to the existing problems in current MAC protocols and thus bring it into an efficient and adaptive form so that it can be used in Wireless Mesh Networks. Effort was placed on to modify the modern concept of parallel transmission which is thought to be the best fit for use in WMN. Modifications to the already existing MACA-P (Medium Access via Collision Avoidance with Enhanced Parallelism) protocol were done and thus newer suggestions were made in order to make it adaptive and efficient, and to achieve flexibility and effectiveness.