EMAC: An Asynchronous Routing-Enhanced MAC Protocol in Multi-Hop Wireless Networks

Traditional contention-based random-access wireless MAC protocols such as IEEE 802.11 DCF are designed for single-hop wireless networks and do not perform well in multi-hop scenarios due to inefficiency in their medium reservation mechanisms. In this paper, we introduce a new MAC protocol, called EMAC, which improves the efficiency of wireless medium reservation for general asynchronous multi-hop wireless networks. By exploiting limited routing information at the MAC layer, EMAC enables multiple asynchronous stations along a delivery path to cooperate in their random medium access. In particular, a control frame can travel across a multi-hop path composed of asynchronous nodes, and make synchronized medium reservations for an upcoming data frame transmission. This distributed cooperation at the MAC layer can greatly improve the medium reservation efficiency by reducing intra-flow contentions. Simulation results show that EMAC can improve end-to-end throughput compared to IEEE 802.11 DCF in chain scenarios by up to 85% and can avoid throughput starvation in cross scenarios.