A Traffic Adaptive Media Access Control Protocol with Hybrid Slot Allocation for Self-Organizing Networks

Abstract

In order to promote the efficiency of media access control (MAC) in self-organizing networks (SONs), this paper proposes a time division multiple access (TDMA) style MAC protocol based on hybrid slot allocation with traffic adaptive. The frame design, the time synchronization mechanism, the hybrid slot allocation method and the protocol process are analyzed respectively. The hybrid slot allocation MAC protocol allocates slot resource on the demand of the traffic requirement of each station to improve the network throughput. As a proof of principle, system level simulations are carried out, in which the algorithm is evaluated for different traffic distribution. Analysis demonstrates the rightness of the proposed approach.