Implementation of a cooperative MAC protocol using a software defined radio platform

Cooperation in wireless networks has shown significant performance gains in comparison to legacy wireless networks. Cooperative wireless protocols achieve such efficiency by enabling cooperation among nodes to exploit spatial diversity. CoopMAC is a medium access control (MAC) protocol that enables cooperation by using an intermediate node as a helper to a direct communication under poor channel conditions. The helper is typically located in a position where it experiences a good channel with both the source and destination. Therefore, it increases the efficiency of the communication by forwarding a packet from the source to the destination using high transmission rates. In an earlier attempt, we demonstrated the benefits of cooperation at the MAC layer by implementing the CoopMAC protocol using an open source wireless driver platform. However, due to some limitations posed by the hardware, the full potential of the protocol could not be explored. In this paper, we proceed with a complete implementation of the cooperative MAC protocol using an OFDM based software defined radio (SDR) platform. We investigate the benefits of the SDR approach, describe the details of the implementation, as well as the experiments we run in order to evaluate the protocol. Experimental results show that CoopMAC can easily be implemented and can lead to a significant improvement in the performance of wireless networks.