An Energy Efficient Hierarchical Cooperation Based TDMA MAC Protocol in Ad Hoc Wireless Networks

Hierarchical cooperation (HC) has been proven in linear capacity scaling for ad hoc networks when density of nodes exists. This technology has recently been studied as a new generation network architecture (i.e., 5G). However, for cellular networks, there have been few studies on MAC protocols for HC in relation to signaling. In particular, energy consumption due to frequently changed clusters for maintaining consecutive ad hoc networks, and with respect to limited battery supply, is an important issue that should be addressed. In this paper, we propose an energy efficient HC based (EEHC-) TDMA MAC protocol aimed at alleviating energy depletion. Through a simulation, we analyze the EEHC-TDMA MAC protocol considering hierarchy, density, and distance. Finally, we show that an EEHC-TDMA MAC with hierarchy reduces energy consumption and also achieves maximum throughput close to the linear capacity scaling.