BROADEN: an Efficient Collision-Free MAC Protocol for

Ad Hoc Wireless Networks

Tiantong You Chi-Hsiang Yeh Hossam Hassanein

School of Computing Dept of Electrical and Computer Eng. School of Computing
Queen’s University Queen’s University Queen’s University
Kingston, ON K7L 3N6, Canada Kingston, ON K7L 3N6, Canada Kingston, ON K7L 3N6, Canada
you@cs.queensu.ca yeh@ece.queensu.ca hossam@cs.queensu.ca

Abstract Recently, a lot of research has been done on local wireless

In this paper, we present a new collision free MAC
protocol – multi-channel Binary-countdown-carrier-sense /
Request-to-send (RTS) / Object-to-send (OTS) / Agree-to-
send (ATS) / Disagree-to-send (DTS) / Ensure-to-send (ETS)
/ Neaten-to-send (NTS) (BROADEN) for ad hoc wireless
networks that can achieve 100% collision free performance.
Furthermore, it can totally solve the “exposed terminal”,
“hidden terminal”, and “moving terminal” problems. It will
also decrease the bandwidth consumed per transmitted data
packet and thus improve the network's performance in
decreasing the average delay of packet sending, dropping
discard ratio, and increase the network's throughput
significantly. Finally, the scheme can enable different
packets with different priorities access the media according
to their priority level and thus gain their desired QoS.
1. Introduction
In the ad-hoc [1] type of wireless network, portable
devices are brought together to form a network on the fly.
Usually every node is able to communicate with every other
node when all nodes are spread around a relatively small
geographic range. However, nodes may spread over a larger
geographic range than the communication signal can reach.
In this case nodes may have to communicate over multiple
hops. There is only one medium that is shared by all the
nodes that are in the same radio communication range, and
the radio frequency bandwidth is limited. As well, packet
collisions are unavoidable due to the fact that traffic arrivals
are random and there is non-zero propagation time between
transmitters and receivers. Therefore, Medium Access
Control (MAC) schemes are used to coordinate access to the
single channel in the network. Mobile terminals have to
contend for the medium access themselves. Carrier Sense
Medium Access (CSMA) [2] is the main mechanism to
implement medium access. Consequently, transmissions of
packets from distinct mobile terminals are more prone to
overlap, resulting in packet losses. Retransmissions may be
required and noticeable delays can result.
MAC protocols [4-17]. The IEEE 802.11 [8-10] protocol,
which defines the MAC and physical layer standards for
license-free industrial, scientific and medical (ISM) bands
[3] allocated by the Federal Communications Commission
(FCC) in the USA, is the most popular MAC for wireless
LANs. It consists of Distributed Coordination Function
(DCF) and Point Coordination Function (PCF). The DCF is
based on the CSMA/CA mechanism and solves the “hidden
terminal” problem [4] efficiently with the Request-to-send
message and Clear-to-send message. In this case, all the
neighboring nodes that heard any one of these two messages
will reserve the media for data packet sending. In the
scheme, the transmission radius for all the packets (including
data packets, function packets, etc) is fixed. The “exposed
nodes” problem [5] still exists in the scheme, and this wastes
lots of media bandwidth.
To solve the “hidden terminal”, “exposed terminal”, and
“moving terminal” problem [6,7] thoroughly, Yeh proposed
a ROC scheme [6], in which nodes around the sender do not
need to reserve the time for data sending when they hear the
Request-to-send message. Instead, a node sends an Object-
to-send (OTS) message to neighboring nodes. When the
node is receiving or planning to receive data packets.
Neighboring nodes then refrain from transmission. In the
ROC scheme, the sending of RTS, OTS, and CTS is through
a separate control channel. . To improve the throughput of
the network, [6] also proposed to use variable-radius to
replace the fixed –radius in data packet sending.
In this paper, we introduce a 100% collision free MAC
protocol – BROADEN which is a special case of our
proposed CSMA/CP [19] for the ad-hoc wireless networks.
In particular, we propose the Binary-count-down-carrier-
sense/Request-to-send (RTS) / Object-to-send (OTS) /
Agree-to-send (ATS) / Disagree-to-send (DTS) / Ensure-to-
send (ETS) / Neaten-to-send (NTS) (BROADEN) protocol,
where ETS and NTS contain the final contracted data
sending plan between the sender and destination that should
be recorded by the neighboring mobile stations (MTs). With
this proposed protocol, we can completely protect the
packets from collision not only in the control channel, but
also from the data channel if we count the nodal mobility

Proceedings of the 28th Annual IEEE International Conference on Local Computer Networks (LCN’03)
0742-1303/03 $ 17.00 © 2003 IEEE
 factor. Furthermore, it could solve the “exposed terminal”,
“hidden terminal”, and “moving terminal” problems as a
bundle thus improves the network's performance
dramatically.
This paper is organized as follows. The next section
discusses the Carrier Sense Media Access / ID Countdown
(CSMA/IC) protocol which is a preliminary mechanism we
propose at [20] for our BROADEN protocol. Section 3
discuss the BROADEN protocol. Performance evaluation of
protocols using simulation will be discussed in Section 4. In
Section 5, we conclude the paper.
2. CSMA/IC PROTOCOL
2.1. Basic Mechanism for CSMA/IC
In the CSMA/IC protocol, the transmission radius is fixed
to certain unified value and the sensing radius is twice or
more that of the transmission radius. This could be achieved
by simply setting the noise signal-sensing threshold lower,
or we could accompany the data sending with an extra
“Tone signal” as in DBTMA [15], which has twice of the
data transmission radius. As Fig. 1 shows, circle 1 is the
maximum transmission range of node “a”; the nodes outside
this range or on the edge of this range cannot receive the
data clearly. We suppose that the collision radius is the same
as the transmission radius. The radius of circle 2 is the
sensing radius which is twice or more that of radius 1. The
nodes inside the sensing radius, but outside the transmission
radius, can sense (not hear) the sending signal of the sender
and thus suppress sending to avoid collision.
Our CSMA/IC protocol is based on a binary countdown
media access mechanism. First, the system needs to be
synchronized so that mobile-stations (MTs) could compete
for the media beginning at the same time point. External
devices like a satellite Global Positioning System (GPS) or
the access points etc. or internal devices like some elected
MT (i.e. Mobile Point Coordinator –MPC [18],) could be
used to make the synchronization. Even through these
mechanisms are (potentially) available, the synchronization
in the ad hoc wireless network is one of the hardest problems
to solve. Fortunately, our CSMA/IC only requires local
2
1 control packet
a b
Fig. 1 The communication range and sensing range
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synchronization between neighboring competing nodes, and
the asynchrony between the nodes several hops away will
not affect or have trivial effect on the function of our
CSMA/IC protocol. To reach the local synchronization
requirement, we propose a simple synchronization
mechanism in our CSMA/IC. That is, every MTs will initiate
and maintain a sync-clock by hearing the media for Sync-
beacon-signal (SB) from neighboring MTs. Fig. 2 shows the
time format of our CSMA/IC. The time period is formatted
to equal length (by agreement policy) super-frames and each
super-frame begins by a time slot of medium sensing,
followed by Sync-beacon sending slot (the SB signal is sent
during this period), a series of time slots used for ID count
down, and finally the data sending period. The MTs can only
compete for the media at the start point of the super-frame
periodically, depending on their own sync-clock. To
synchronize the MTs sync-clock locally, every MT will send
a sync-beacon signal occasionally (not necessary every time)
in the Sync-beacon sending slot. That is, whether the MT
will send the SB signal this round will be decided randomly
with the probability, which is anti-proportion to the
neighboring nodal density. The surrounding MTs will adjust
their sync-clock when they hear the SB signal. If the MT
hears two asynchronous SB signals (from nodes hidden to
each other), it will send the SB signal next round based on
the first SB signal previously heard, and other MTs (hidden
nodes) will adjust their sync-clock according to the new
round SB signal. So, some MTs even though they have no
data packets to send will send an SB signal and not go
further to the ID countdown time period after sending the SB
signal.
Before competing or sending the Sync-beacon signal, the
node first senses the medium during the “Media sensing
slot”. If the medium is not idle (e.g., a neighboring node is
sending data), it will quit the current competition and wait
for the next round. Otherwise, the node will trigger the ID
countdown mechanism right after the SB sending slot. For
each packet that will be sent, the node will create an equal
length binary number (its value must be unique in the
Competition Competition Competition
period period period
Time
Binary countdown period
Time
Binary countdown slots
Sync-beacon slot
Media sensing slot
Fig. 2 The frame format for the control channel of
BROADEN.
 surrounding nodes). The higher value of the binary number
means higher priority. Thus we can encrypt the packet’s
priority (packet type and waiting time) to the binary number.
Corresponding to the binary number, the Inter Frame Space
(IFS) consists of slots of time that match every bit of the
unique binary number. During competition, at the time slot
that represents the “0” bit in the binary number, the node
will sense the medium. When it senses that the media is
busy, it will quit the competition, otherwise the node will
continue competing for the medium. At the time slot that
represents the bit “1” in the binary number, the node will
send a buzz signal. The nodes that finish processing the
entire binary number win the media and send the packet. So,
in this competition, the node with the higher value of binary
number always wins the media.
2.2 Analysis of CSMA/IC
In the ad-hoc wireless network, the medium is shared by
all the MTs. The sending signal by itself dominates the
signal from neighboring nodes. So, there is no way to detect
the collision when the node is sending a signal. There are
two sources of data collision. One source comes from the
“hidden terminal”. The other is the concurrently sent signal.
The CSMA/IC protocol can achieve 100% collision free
performance with the following two thereon. As described in
last section, the sensing radius in CSMA/IC is twice or more
that of the collision radius.
Theorem 1: All “hidden terminals” of a sending node
could sense the signal sending of the sending node except if
there is the concurrent sending in CSMA/IC.
Proof: The destination of the legal packet sending must
be inside the maximum transmission radius (J). Then, the
distance between the sender and destination must be smaller
than J. The “hidden terminals” which are the nodes that
could interfere with the data reception of the destination
node must be in the range of destination’s collision area. So,
the distance between destination and the “hidden terminal”
must be smaller or equal to the collision radius that is equal
to transmission radius (J). So, the distance between the
sender and any “hidden terminal” must smaller than 2J - in
the sensing range. As Fig. 1 shows, the node “b” is the
furthest node that may interfere with the furthest receiver of
node “a”. But node “b” is in the sensing range of node “a”-
they could sense the sending of each other if they send at the
different time.
111111 111100 110000
a b c d e f
111110 111000 100000
Fig. 3 Scenario of media access competition by binary
countdown which waste media resource
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Theorem 2: If the nodes can sense the signal sending of
each other, with the CSMA/IC, there are no two nodes or
more with different binary numbers, which could win the
media at the same time.
Proof: We compare two different binary number values
that are of equal-bit length (for a small value binary number,
the high position bit could use “0” to make the binary
number fixed bit long) bit by bit from the highest bit position
to the lowest bit position. We must be able to find the
highest bit position that has a different bit value. The bit
value in the binary number with the higher value must be
“1”, and the binary number with lower value must be “0”. At
the corresponding time slot, the node with the bit value “0”
will sense the medium and sense signal sending from the
node with the bit value “1” and quit. So, two or more
winners with different binary codes could not co-exist at the
same time. In our proposed CSMA/IC, the binary code the
node used to compete for the media must be unique, thus
guaranteeing one sender in the same sensing range.
To show some advantages of CSMA/IC, we compare it
with the CSMA/CA mechanism defined in the IEEE 802.11.
In both mechanisms, before sending a packet, there is time
overhead to compete for the medium. The competing
overhead in IEEE 802.11 consists of IFS plus a variable
number of time slots, which is randomly created from the
Collision Window (CW) – a parameter reflecting the traffic
situation. Let’s say the length of IFS is equal to 3 time-slots,
and the maximum CW is 128, then the length of competing
overhead of IEEE 802.11 will vary from 3+0 to 3+128. In
the CSMA/IC, the length of competing overhead is a
constant value (16 time-slots is enough). So, the length of
competing overhead in a binary count down mechanism is
acceptable. Furthermore, it makes the synchronization more
efficient. Because the length of competing overhead is
constant, and the length of a function packet is constant, then
we can slice the time into units equal to a constant
competing overhead time + time to send a function packet. If
we try to use the synchronization in the CSMA/CA, we have
to slice the time into the sections equal to 3+128+time to
send the packet. The bandwidth wasting in competing
overhead is significant even when network traffic is light
(especially when the size of the sending packet is small).
Using CSMA/IC, we can achieve collision-free MAC, but
to synchronize the wireless ad-hoc networks we need
external devices. There is another potential trade off that
wastes the medium resource in binary count down. That is,
110000 100100 100001
a b c d e f
101000 100010 100000
Fig. 4 Another scenario of media access competition
 in one communication range, there may be no winner; the
winner may lay several hops away - that would not happen
in CSMA/CA defined in the IEEE 802.11 protocol. As Fig. 3
shows, when node “a”, “b”, “c”, “d”, “e”, and “f” want to
access the medium at the same time, they use the binary key
as shown in the figure. When the process starts, node “f”
first senses that the medium is busy at time slot 2 and quits,
node “e” quits at time slot 3, and so on. Finally, only node
“a” wins the medium.
In the case shown in Fig. 4, the node’s layout is the same
as in Fig. 3, but if the binary code is modified to the value as
shown in the figure, the performance will be different. In the
second time slot, node “b” is beaten by node “a” and quits.
So, node “c” survives even though its binary code is smaller
than node “b”. In the fourth time slot, node “d” is beaten by
node “c” and quits, then node “e” survives and beats node
“f”. So, in this case, even the value of the binary code
decreases from node “a” to node “f”, but finally, node “a”,
“c”, and “e” all win the competition and send at the same
time without collision.
The CSMA/IC protocol has good performance in single
hop ad-hoc wireless networks, e.g., a conference setting. All
the nodes pack into one room; they are all located in each
other’s transmission range, no matter the sensing range.
However, in multi-hops ad-hoc wireless networks, the
nodes are spread in large area. In the whole sensing area
(which is 4 times the transmission area), only one node at
most could be allowed to send at one time. The bandwidth
cost is too high, especially for the large size data packet. The
“exposed terminal” problem still exists. To solve the
“exposed terminal” problem entirely and thus improve the
networks performance dramatically, we also propose a new
protocol – CSMA/IC. In this new protocol, the entire
channel has been separated into two channels: a control
channel and a data channel. The packet sending (normally
large size) in the data channel is based on the schedule but
the function packet sending (fixed small size) in the control
channel is based on CSMA/IC. Considering the relatively
small size of a function packet, the bandwidth occupied in
the control channel is reasonable.
3. BROADEN PROTOCOL
3.1. Basic Mechanism of BROADEN
In our BROADEN protocol, the wireless channel has been
separated into two channels: the data channel (occupying
80% or more of total bandwidth) and the control channel
(occupying 20 or less of total bandwidth). In the data
channel, the mechanism to access the medium is based on
the negotiated scheme that can be made in the control
channel. In the data channel, when the time comes, the node
will send the indicated data packet at the scheduled time
period, with the indicated transmission radio range in the
data channel no matter whether the neighboring nodes send
or not (the transmission range of the data packet is variable,
depending on the negotiation result of the control channel).
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e
f
d
b a c
g
r
h
Fig. 5 Example of currently data sending in data channel
The performance of the data channel will be optimized (no
exposed terminal or hidden terminal problems and accurate
radius transmission which could achieve several concurrent
transmissions in the same sensing range) by the negotiation
in the control channel. As Fig. 5 shows, when node “a” is
sending a packet to node “b”, instead of using maximum
transmission radius r, it uses the transmission radius “a o
b”. Thus at the same time, node “c” could send a packet to
node “d” with transmission radius “c o d”; node “e” sends
packet to node “f”; and node “g” sends a packet to node “h”.
Here, node “a” and node “c” are “exposed terminals” to each
other, and both of them are “exposed terminals” to node “g”.
Any receiver must return an ACK when it receives a data
packet to confirm reception. If the sender does not receive
the ACK after sending the data packet, it will regard the data
packet has suffered collision and will re-schedule to send it
again. If the sender tries several times without any response,
the destination will be regarded as shutting down or moving
out of sender’s maximum transmission radius and thus be
deleted from sender’s database. The ACK will be sent
through the control channel.
Opposite to the data packet sending in the data channel
(based on a schedule), the access to the control channel is
based on BROADEN. When a node wants to announce a
sending schedule in the data channel, it sends RTS in the
control channel to ask for the neighboring nodes’ feedback.
The surrounding nodes will either keep silent or send back
OTS, ATS, and DTS to express their attitudes to the sending
schedule in the RTS. After modifying the schedule, the RTS
sender then sends ETS to announce the final sending
schedule to the neighboring nodes. The destination sends
NTS to announce the corresponding final receiving schedule
to the surrounding nodes.
 3.2. Detailed Mechanism of BROADEN
Any mobile station (MT) will maintain three tables:
(1) MT table – which is used to record the neighboring
MTs when receiving any signal from them and the value of
the geographical distance from this MT. The MT will
broadcast a so-called “hello message” periodically with a
prescribed maximum transmission range to communicate the
message and thus announce its existence to its neighbors.
This will force the MT sending signal and avoid the MT
keeping silent for so long that it becomes regarded as un-
contactable - shutting down or moving out of maximum
communication range. The neighboring MT will renew the
corresponding MT record in its MT table according to the
message it receives. Because the sender uses a fixed
transmission radius to send this message, the distance
between the sender and receiver could be calculated by
testing the strength of the received signal. The value will
also be recorded to the MT table. Besides the “hello
message”, other messages that have a fixed transmission
range can also be used to renew the distance record of the
corresponding MT in the MT table.
(2) Receiving duty table – which is used to record the
scheduled receiving events that are currently taking place or
will happen. For every receiving event, three pieces of
information are recorded: receiving MT ID, start receiving
time and receiving duration.
(3) Sending duty table – which is used to record the
current or future scheduled sending events whose
transmission range will cover me. For every event, it also
records the sending MT ID, start sending time and sending
duration.
When the MT plans to send a data packet, if the data
packet has a destination (unicasting) it will first search the
MT table to check whether the destination MT is in its one-
hop range or not. If the destination is not in the MT table,
then the data packet will be discarded or will be assigned a
relaying MT as destination (this will be studied in the ad hoc
wireless network routing in the future). From the MT table,
the sender will determine the accurate transmission radius. If
the intending data packet is a broadcasting or a multi-casting
packet, the transmission range will set to the maximum
transmission range or the transmission range that can reach
the furthest destination. The sender will search the receiving
duty table to find some time periods, in which sending the
data packet with this transmission radius will not bother
other nodes’ receiving. After that, the sender will search the
sending duty table to make sure that the destination is not
sending a packet at those time periods (deleting the conflict
periods). When searching the sending duty table, all the
destinations of Multicasting or all the nodes surrounding the
broadcasting node will be counted. The sender will put the
message of scheduling transmission radius and possible
sending periods in the request-to-send (RTS) function
packet, and broadcast the RTS with the prescribed fixed
transmission range through the control channel (Note: In the
RTS, the last time period is always an infinite length time
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period from a certain time on, so, the destination could
always choose a time period from the RTS).
The neighboring nodes, except the destination, will again
check their receiving duty table to see whether the time
period in RTS conflicts with their own receiving or
scheduling of receiving duty. If it does conflict (this rarely
happens because the sender already checks before sending
RTS, but nodal mobility may cause the RTS sender to use
some inaccurate geographical information and thus lead to
conflict), the neighboring MT will send an object-to-send
(OTS) message, which may contain a suggested time period.
The destination, when it receives the RTS will, like other
neighboring nodes, check the receiving duty table, but most
importantly it will check the sending duty table to see
whether other sending or scheduled sending will affect this
scheduling time. If the time period in RTS does not conflict
with other sending, the destination will respond back with
agree-to-send (ATS), otherwise, it will respond back with
disagree-to-send (DTS) which may also contain some
suggested time periods that will be safe for receiving this
scheduled data packet. After collecting the surrounding
nodes’ OTS and ATS or DTS, the RTS sender analyses the
message, and then broadcasts the final ensure-to-send (ETS)
message to announce the scheduled sending. All the
surrounding nodes (including the destination) will record the
sending duty in their sending duty table when they receive
the ETS. The destination will also broadcast neaten-to-send
(NTS) to announce the scheduled receiving duty when it
receiving the ETS. The surrounding nodes (including the
sender) will record the receiving duty in their receiving duty
table. In the next paragraph, we will discuss the binary count
down mechanism in the BROADEN protocol.
The OTS may not be valuable in the unicasting situation
because sending of RTS and ETS already calculate
accurately the possible receivers’ position before sending the
packets. But it will be valuable in the multi-casting or
broadcasting situation. When a node plans to make a
schedule to send a broadcasting-type or multi-casting-type of
data packet, all the neighboring nodes or multi-destinations
will regard themselves as the destination of the ETS. They
all record the sender to the sender duty list, and themselves
to the receiver duty list. The destinations could send the NTS
or keep silent. If all of the neighboring nodes respond back
with NTS, it could increase the traffic load of the network,
but all the nodes around the destinations will know the
receiving schedule and thus help to initialize an accurate
sending schedule. In the second case, if the destination keeps
silent, some neighboring nodes of the destination will not
record the corresponding receiving to the receiving duty list.
So, in the latter case, before sending the RTS, the node scans
the receiving duty list but may still miss some receiving
node messages. That will cause the missing node to send
OTS to correct the schedule. When the neighboring node
receives the broadcasting RTS, it could send both the OTS
(find itself is scheduled to receive a packet by checking the
receiving duty list) and DTS (find its receiving could be
 bothered by other sending by checking the sending duty list).
The later is used to object to the sending. The former is not
only used to object to the sending, but also to announce a
missing receiving to the receiving duty list.
For each control packet every node will create a unique
equal length binary number that consists of a priority
number plus the unique MAC ID. The priority of function
packet is created based on the differentiation of function
packet type and the data packet it relates to, and packet
waiting time. Converting the unique MAC ID creates the
second part of the binary number that makes the whole
binary number unique. For example, considering a 16 bit
binary number if we assign the first 4 bits for the priority,
then we could have 16 different priority classes, the higher
priority is assigned a higher value. We assign the next 12
bits for the unique node’s MAC ID, which can contain 4096
different node’s IDs in the same wireless LAN or the same
transmission range. If some “authority centers” have been
implemented such as Mobile Point Coordinator (MPC) [18]
or Virtual Base Station (VBS), we can make the length of
second part of binary number variable to match the density
of the LAN whose value is announced by the authority
center to make it concurrent. Thus, we can have smaller size
binary numbers to make the competing overhead even
smaller if the nodal density of the wireless LAN is sparse.
To simplify the issue, we make the length of second part
fixed (12 bits) and normally 12 bits is enough to represent
the unique MAC ID in wireless LANs. For example, if node
“12” tries to compete for the medium for sending a packet of
category class "3", this packet sending competition could be
represented by the binary number 0011,0000,0000,1100.
In the competition, a lower priority function packet will
lose the competition and quit in the same range. In the case
of same priority packets, the lower MAC ID node will lose
and quit. In our BROADEN protocol, the priority sequence
of some function packets is defined as follows: (higher
priority with larger binary numbers) RTS < ETS < ATS =
DTS < OTS < NTS < ACK.
The RTS has the lowest priority compared to other
function packets, and in the RTS, it could still differentiate
different classes of data packets with different priorities. For
example, we give the RTS for real-time data packets higher
priority than the RTS for non-real-time data packets. This
c In the function priority definition, the ACK has the
a b d g
e f
Fig. 6 One scenario of media competition in the control
channel in multi-hop case
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means the sending of real-time packets can be scheduled
earlier than the non-real-time packets. After sending the
RTS, the neighboring nodes may respond with OTS, or the
destination may respond with ATS or DTS. OTS has higher
priority than ATS or DTS, so the OTSs can always be sent
before DTS or ATS, one by one without collision. After
finishing sending the RTS, the RTS sender also joins the
competition for ETS sending without delay. Because the
ETS has lower priority than the ATS, DTS and OTS, it
always sends after the neighboring nodes finish sending
OTS, ATS, and DTS.
If the ETS wins the medium without hearing the ATS or
DTS from the destination, it means that either the destination
has already shut down or moved out of communication area,
or other neighboring nodes that are hidden from the ETS
sender blocked the sending of ATS or DTS (as shown in Fig.
6). In the figure, node “a” sends a RTS to node “b”, and
begins competing for ETS sending. However the sending of
DTS or ATS from node “b” is blocked by the higher priority
of function packet sending from nodes “d” or “f”. In this
case, the RTS sender may wait for some time for the
responding message of DTS or ATS till time has expired and
then cancel the plan if the RTS is for a unicast transmission.
If the RTS is multicasting (contains a schedule for several
data packets, which will be sent to several destinations), the
RTS sender may send out ETS that only ensures the sending
plans of destinations that responded back ATS or DTS in
time. For the ATS or DTS that respond after ETS, the RTS
sender could send an extra ETS in multicasting. The
destination of ETS will respond with NTS to announce the
data-receiving plan after receiving the ETS. Although, the
NTS has higher priority than the ATS or DTS, it always
sends in the last step of the mechanics because it is a
respond packet to the relatively lower priority function
packet ETS whose priority is beyond the OTS, ATS, and
DTS. But after the ETS, the NTS must follow immediately
(if not beaten by OTS, ATS, or DTS) to announce the
sending – receiving schedule. Compared to CSMA/CA, one
obvious advantage of our BROADEN is it could arrange
sequential responses from neighboring nodes easily and
efficiently. But in CSMA/CA, when a node finishes sending
RTS, it must wait for several time units for neighboring
nodes to respond back with ATS, DTS, and OTS - the
number of this kind of packet sending is unpredictable. So,
how long a node waits before it could send the ETS is a
problem in CSMA/CA.
highest priority, because when a node sends out a data
packet, it expects the feedback can come back immediately
without delay. A response message, like OTS, has higher
priority than messages like ATS or DTS, because when the
sender sends out RTS, it expects the destination sends the
ATS or DTS after the OTS, which is sent by the objector
nodes around the RTS sender. With this collision-free
protocol, any number of OTS messages can be collected one
by one until a DTS or ATS is received. So, the RTS sender
 could know the time when the message collection process is
finished. There is no necessity to reserve a time period for
OTS and ATS separately, as in CSMA/CA.
Using this BROADEN MAC protocol in ad hoc wireless
networks, multicast RTS becomes possible. When one node
sends out multicast RTS, the objectors win the medium first
and send the OTS one by one. Then, the destinations of RTS
send out ATS or DTS one by one. After the destination with
the smallest ID sends out the ATS or DTS, or receives a
control packet whose priority is lower than ATS or DTS, it
means all the response messages have finished. The schedule
initiator can send the ETS to announce the data packets
sending schedule in the future. For example assume node
“A” has several packets that are intended for b”, “c and “d”
separately, “A” sends a RTS that contains all the information
of booking message of “b”, “c”, and “d”. Nodes “b”, “c”,
and “d” must send back a feedback message to clear whether
the destinations are available to receive the data packet or
not at that specific time. The sender can only guarantee the
sending of a data packet not interfering with the former
reserved neighboring receiving nodes by checking the
receiving duty table. There is no way for the sender to know
in advance whether the destinations will suffer collision
except that a destination can send a respond message to tell
the sender. Furthermore, the RTS sender needs the multi
destinations’ response to make sure that they are reachable.
In BROADEN, if the data traffic rate is high, and the
control channel is enabled to timely schedule all the data
sending, then the data sending may be scheduled to be very
late. The time gap between the actual data sending and the
data-sending schedule making becomes very large.
Furthermore, to make sure that some low ID nodes do not
wait for too long, we can specify that when the node
schedules the sending, it will not schedule the next sending
before finishing the currently scheduled sending (continuous
scheduling is our future research). Using this simple method,
in BROADEN, the high ID node will wait for the time to
come to send the scheduled data packet, and the low ID node
could negotiate its data sending during the high ID node’s
waiting time. We can define an increasing packet priority
mechanism to solve the starvation problem. We can also
make a regulation that defines that the future-sending
schedule must be less than a certain time from now.
3.3 Enhanced Mechanisms to Prevent Collisions
With the BROADEN protocol we could achieve 100%
collision free activity in the control channel. The collision of
data packets in the data channel is due to failed negotiation
in the control channel that happens for several reasons. One
is the nodal mobility, and another is the neighboring nodes
concurrent negotiation. We will discuss these two issues in
more detail and the supplemental mechanisms to achieve the
100% collision free activity in our proposed BROADEN
protocol in this section.
There is a time gap between the actual data sending time
and the sending schedule madding time. Thus nodal mobility
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r3
r1
a a1 d1 d e e1
r2
Fig. 7 Fixed data transmission range
may cause data packets to suffer collision in the data channel
even if the negotiation phase finishes perfectly in the control
channel. When the node announces the data packet-sending
schedule of the future, some nodes are outside the
communication area and cannot hear the announcement.
Then, at the time when the node sends the data packet, some
schedule-conflict nodes may move into the collision area
and cause the collision. To solve this problem, the data-
sending planning mechanism can be improved by calculating
the nodal mobility factor. That is, when negotiating a future
packet transmission, the transmission radius will be enlarged
to be the distance between the current location of the sender
and the destination plus the maximum possible moving
distance before the future sending. We also need to consider
the possible movement of neighboring receiving nodes. So,
the non-receiving area should be further enlarged. The radius
should be calculated by equation 1. It will guarantee that
there will be no receiver located in the area included by the
enlarged transmission radius in the scheduled packet sending
time. As shown in Fig. 7, node “d” plans to send a packet to
node “e” in the future, but at the time when node “d” starts
sending, node “d” moves to new location d1, and node “e”
moves to e1. So, node “d” will adjust its transmission radius
to make node “e” capable of hearing from it. But at the time
when node “d” starts sending, the more distant node “a”
which will receive some packets, moves into collision area
of node “d”. So, when calculating the collision area of node
“d”, instead of radius r1, it will guarantee that no receiver
will be within the radius r2 at the sending time. That is
Rfixed = R+4*S*T
where:
Rfixed is the fixed transmission radius,
R is the current distance between sender and destination,
 S is maximum nodal speed, and
T is the time duration until the scheduled data packet
transmission.
With BROADEN, when all the nodes are in the single
sensing range, only one pair of negotiation can be processed
at any given time, and only one winner is allowed to send
the RTS during one time period. The RTS has lowest
priority among the function type packets. Once the RTS is
sent, the following communication packets' priority are
higher than the RTS, and that will block the neighboring
nodes sending RTS until this negotiation finishes.
To avoid collisions that may take place at the edge of
transmission, we can set the maximum transmission range in
the control channel a little larger than the maximum
transmission range in data channel. We can also regulate
choice of destination choosing regulation, which states: the
maximum destination nodes to be within certain threshold
value smaller than the maximum transmission range in the
data channel.
4. SIMULATION ANALYSIS
In this section, we study the performance of our
BROADEN wireless MAC protocol using simulation. We
compare performance of BROADEN to the single channel
CSMA/CA that is defined in the IEEE 802.11 standard. A
packet-level simulator was developed using the Java
programming language in order to monitor, observe and
measure the performance of our protocol, using different
input parameters.
4.1. Experimental setting
In our simulation experiments, the channel capacity is set
to 20 Mbps. All the MTs are assumed to be within a 400 u
400-unit grid. The CSMA/CA relative parameters are set as
follows: the three IFS periods, SIFS, PIFS, DIFS and the slot
defer time have been set to an effective length of 2, 3, 4 and
1 octet for 20 Mbps, respectively. The size of the Collision
Window (CW) is between 8 and 128. When the MT suffers
repeated collisions, the CW may reach 128. When an MT is
successful for 4 consecutive times, the CW will be halved
till it reaches 8. The parameters in BROADEN are set as
follows: the length of total IFS consists of 16 time slots,
each time slot has the same length effect as the slot time in
the CSMA/CA. In our simulations, when packet
transmission is attempted 3 times without receiving an ACK,
the packet will be discarded. If the MT discards 3 packets in
a row for the same destination, the destination MT is
removed from the “MT table”. “Hello” messages are
exchanged every 0.2 seconds. If the MT does not hear from
its neighboring MT for 2 seconds, it will remove it from its
“MT table”.
Each experiment tests the behavior of the system for a
given number of nodes (80 nodes) for 60 seconds. Our
simulations consist of two stages: the network initiation
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stage, and the testing stage. During the network initiation
stage, the MTs are created one at a time. When an MT is
generated, it tries to establish its neighborhood by
communicating with the “hello” message. After all specified
MTs have been created for 5 seconds, the simulation then
goes into the testing stage where data is collected for an
additional 60 seconds.
4.2. Mobility model
Every MT is in one of two mobility states: moving or
pausing. When in the moving state, the MT moves towards
its target location determined in the last pause period, with a
specific speed (randomly generated with a mean equal to
Move Speed (1 grid unit/sec)). When the MT reaches its
target location, it will reach its pausing state. The length of
the pausing period is also randomly generated with a mean
equal to a user defined input parameter, Pause Time (4 sec).
During the pause period, it will determine the next target
location and its moving speed. Hence, the MT’s lifetime
will consist of moving periods (each with its own speed and
direction), and pausing periods (of different time intervals)
in turn. Another variable parameter related to the mobility
model is the transmission range, which is set to 100 grid
units, and the sensing radius is equal to 2.1 times of
transmission range in the control channel. However, in the
data channel, the sensing radius is equal to the transmission
radius.
4.3. Traffic model
There are a number of packet types: MAC function
packets (ACK, RTS, ETS, etc.), application/data packets
(real-time and non-real-time), and management packets
(hello, merge request, merge response and disjoin). The
length of the function packets and management packets is set
to 20 octets. The length of the data packets is set to 2000
octets. The mean packet arrival rate (Ȝ) is varied from 4, to
80 units/second for every node. The queue size is set to 10
packets. In the series of testing for CSMA/CA of IEEE
802.11, RTS_Threshold (a parameter define when to trigger
the RTS-CTS mechanism) is set to a value such that the
RTS-CTS exchange is used at all times.
4.4. Performance metrics
The performance metrics of interest in this paper are: (1)
the transmission delay, which is measured from the time
when the packet is created until the time the MT receives an
ACK from the destination MT of this sent packet. We
calculate the Average Delay (AD) of all the successfully
received packets. (2) The Networks Throughput, which is a
measure of the number of non-real-time packets sent
successfully (get ACK) per second in the whole wireless
LAN (consist of 80 nodes). (3) The Number of blocked
packets per second – a metrics used to calculate the number
of packets per second blocked in the entire networks. When
the average packets arrival rate (Ȝ) is set to the value higher
than the maximum capacity of packets that can be sent out,
 the queue that is used to store the data packet temporarily
(capacity is set to 10 packets in our experiment) will be
filled, and after that over speed packet arrival will be
blocked.
4.5. Discussion of the results
A number of simulation experiments were conducted in
order to study the performance of BROADEN compared to
DCF of IEEE 802.11 standard. In these two series of
simulation experiments, we set as many as possible of the
network and simulation parameters the same. However, in
the CSMA/CA simulation experiment, the channel is not
separated - the node uses the whole wireless channel for the
function, data, and management packets sending. The MAC
mechanism is based on Distributed-coordination-function
(DCF) has three different lengths of inter-frame spaces (IFS)
and extra random number time slot extensions. Every
sending of data packets, which has a specific destination,
will trigger the RTS-CTS to ease the “hidden terminal”
problem but the multicasting or broadcasting packet will not.
The transmission range is kept fixed. In the BROADEN, we
separate the channel to two parts, 20% for the control
channel (for control packets and the “hello” message), and
80% for the data channel (data and management packets).
The data and management packets sent in the data channel is
based on scheduling, and is of variable transmission radius.
In all experiments, we set the real-time packet arrival rate to
0; we only observed the performance of non-real-time
packets.
In our simulation, the size of queue used to temporarily
store incoming data packets is 10. When the arrival rate
reaches a certain point, the network traffic load become
unbalanced, thus leading to heavy collisions, and the average
delay sharply increases. When the queue is full, the next
oncoming data packet will be blocked. So, when the data
arrival rate is higher than the network traffic load unbalance
point, network performance like Average Delay, Discard
Ratio, and Network Throughput are similar and may
increase slowly due to the uneven character of network.
Fig. 8 shows the AD for BROADEN and CSMA/CA. We
can see that BROADEN has lower AD then CSMA/CA
when the Ȝ increases. When Ȝ is less than 16 packet/sec in
CSMA/CA or smaller than 48 packet/sec in our proposed
BROADEN, the AD of both experiments gets relatively low
AD, because at these packet arrival rates, the system is in
balance, the transmission ability is still over the packet
arrival and the temporary packet-storing queue is in the not-
full state. Fig. 11 shows the packets blocked at these packet
arrival rates are 0 or near 0. When the Ȝ is increased, the
system is becomes unbalanced, and most of time, the packet
temporary storing queue is in the full state. The packet
arrival at the full state queue will be blocked. The AD is
increased slowly to two different maximum values – equal to
the time to send 10 packets (queue capacity) with the
different MAC mechanisms. When the Ȝ =80 unit/sec, is
compared to DCF of CSMA/CA, the AD of our proposed
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BROADEN decreases by 60% and the unbalance point (the
value is 40 units/sec) is much bigger than that in CSMA/CA
(12 units/sec).
Fig. 9 shows the CR of the two MAC mechanisms.
CSMA/CA cannot avoid collisions taking place even in the Ȝ
is low. When the Ȝ increases, the CR of CSMA/CA also
rises sharply till the maximum value (around 35%). Packet
blocking prevents the CR from going up further. However in
our proposed BROADEN, the CR stays at zero from start to
end providing proof of its 100% collision free promise.
Throughput results are shown in Fig. 10. Because the
“exposed node” problem is solved in the proposed protocol,
several nodes can concurrently send packets within a same
transmission range. This will improve our protocol’s
network throughput. Furthermore, for every data packet
transmission, BROADEN optimizes the transmission range,
and this also reduces the bandwidth consumed per packet
sending and thus improves the network's throughput
indirectly. From Fig. 10, we can see that the network
throughput of our proposed BROADEN has increased by
more than 200% over CSMA/CA – a significant
improvement.
5. CONCLUSIONS
In this paper, we proposed a new MAC protocol –
BROADEN for wireless ad hoc networks which can provide
100% collision free media access. The protocol can
effectively solve the “exposed terminal”, “hidden terminal”
and “moving terminal” problems. As well, the protocol is
100% collision free. Simulation results show that, when
compared to the DCF in IEEE 802.11, the performance of
our BROADEN protocol superior. BROADEN, has lower
the AD significantly and higher network throughput.
The BROADEN protocol makes it possible to
differentiate network services in packet sending and thus
achieve QoS. Use of selected nodes as mobile point
coordinators (MPC) to achieve synchronization and
bandwidth reuse with the BROADEN is one of our future
research directions.
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ISCC’03, June 2003

Average Delay of successful sent data Data packets networks throughput

packets 4000
500
3500
400 3000
2500
(unit/sec)

300 2000
msec

1500
200
1000
100 500
Ȝ(unit/sec)
Ȝ(unit/sec) 0
0
4 8 12 16 24 32 40 48 56 64 72 80
4 8 12 16 24 32 40 48 56 64 72 80
Our proposed BROADEN protocol
Our proposed BROADEN protocol
DCF of CSMA/CA
DCF of CSMA/CA

Fig. 8 Average delay Fig. 10 Network throughput

Collision Rate of sent data packets Number of arrival data packet that has
40 been blocked
6000
35
5000
30
(unit/sec)

25 4000
(%)

20 3000
15 2000
10
1000
5 Ȝ(unit/sec) Ȝ(unit/sec)
0
0
4 8 12 16 24 32 40 48 56 64 72 80
4 8 12 16 24 32 40 48 56 64 72 80
Our proposed BROADEN protocol
Our proposed BROADEN protocol DCF of CSMA/CA
DCF of CSMA/CA

Fig. 9 Collision ratio Fig.11 Number of data packets

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