Hidden chain: a full-duplex MAC protocol using hidden terminal relationships in wlans

Full-duplex radio allows signals to be transmitted and received simultaneously by utilizing Self-Interference Cancellation (SIC). At a maximum, it can double the throughput of traditional half-duplex systems. To enhance throughput as much as possible, it is important to utilize downlink and uplink transmissions simultaneously. This paper proposes Hidden Chain MAC protocol, which improves throughput by using hidden terminal relationships to balance downlink and uplink traffic; it also allows access point and stations to transmit data without contention, and reduces ACK overhead. We conduct simulations to evaluate the throughput gains provided by our MAC protocol in a scenario with densely deployed stations. Through the simulation results, we show that the proposed protocol provides significant throughput improvements over the IEEE 802.11 DCF and naive full-duplex MAC protocols.