Int. J. Electron. Commun.

(AEÜ) 128 (2021) 153488

Contents lists available at ScienceDirect

International Journal of Electronics and Communications

journal homepage: www.elsevier.com/locate/aeue

Regular paper

Full duplex wireless communiation with dynamic buffer aided

MAC protocol
Anshul Maloo *, Prabhat K. Sharma
Department of Electronics and Communication Engineering, Visvesvaraya National Institute of Technology, Nagpur, India

A R T I C L E I N F O A B S T R A C T

Keywords: This paper presents a dynamic buffer aided medium access control protocol for asymmetric traffic conditions in
Full duplex an IoT network, where the IoT devices send data to a wireless access point (WAP) which then forwards the data
Cross layer to the network fusion center. Specifically, the control frame structures of conventional carrier sense multiple
MAC protocol
access with collision detection (CSMA/CD) protocol are modified for incorporating the traffic asymmetry of the
network. The devices and WAP are assumed to have full duplex abilities to support continuous sensing of the
channel. The sensing performance of the considered system is derived for arbitrary number of devices in terms of
probabilities of false alarm and miss detection. Moreover, the throughput of the network is also obtained.
Simulation results show that the proposed cross-layer design achieves significant throughput improvement while
incorporating traffic asymmetry of the network.

1. Introduction considered, but in a bidirectional communication system. In [5], an FD-

The upcoming wireless networks demand higher throughput and
ultra reliability. The full duplex (FD) technology can help the user sense
the channel continuously and hence reduces the delay. However the
residual self interference (RSI), which is inherent in any FD system,
limits the sensing performance. Moreover, performance of half duplex
(HD) systems are limited due to compromised rate of transmission.
Moreover, some key challenges limits the performance of HD systems
such as high end to end delays, lower throughput and collision. In order
to attain maximum benefits from FD technology the optimization at
different layers considering these key issues are needed. One approach
for exploiting the FD technology is through change of framing structures
of the current protocol standards. With the help of framing structure the
challenges such as hidden terminal problem which in turn causes
collision in FD can be negotiated. This leads to higher throughput in the
network. On the other hand, merely using FD technology in wireless
network does not improve throughput, we also need to improve the
sensing performance of the users. In such conditions, the cross layer
approach for designing the medium access control (MAC) protocol be­
comes critical.
Many works [1–3] in the recent literature have focused on the cross-
layer design of MAC protocols for FD networks. The header snooping
was added in the MAC protocol in [4] where the virtual backoffs were
MAC protocol was proposed in which the problems of route selection
and collisions were addressed using the overhearing frames. However
the work in [5] has considered the perfect self interference (SI)
cancellation at the physical layer which, despite of significant
advancement in SI cancellation technology, is not a practical assump­
tion. In [6] power centric cross layer protocol taking RSI into account
was proposed using a different route cost estimation. However end-to-
end latency was increased due to power control mechanism at trans­
mitter node. Recently, the sensing centric MAC protocol was discussed
in [7] where the analysis was performed considering two users only. In
[8], the protocol has taken into account the RSI and analysed the
physical layer characteristics but used the conventional carrier sense
multiple access with collision detection (CSMA/CD) protocol, which in
turn decreased the throughput and increased the end-to-end latency.
The existing works limit their analysis only for two users and do not
consider the arbitrary number of users in the network. Moreover the
effect of the traffic asymmetry between wireless access point (WAP) to
network fusion center (NFC) has not been considered in the available
literature of FD MAC protocols.
In this paper we focus on cross-layer protocol with partial SI
cancellation where an arbitrary number of FD users can transmit the
data. The key contributions of this paper can be summarized as follows:

* Corresponding author.
E-mail address: anshul.maloo23@gmail.com (A. Maloo).

https://doi.org/10.1016/j.aeue.2020.153488
Received 19 March 2020; Accepted 1 October 2020
Available online 19 October 2020
1434-8411/© 2020 Elsevier GmbH. All rights reserved.
A. Maloo and P.K. Sharma AEUE - International Journal of Electronics and Communications 128 (2021) 153488

• Proposed protocol considers the traffic asymmetry between the WAP
to NFC and incorporates the dynamic buffer in WAP which may
change dynamically depending on the variable traffic conditions.
• In order to increase the throughput and to avoid the hidden terminal
problem, a new framing structure is proposed.
• A practical scenario is considered where an arbitrary number of N
devices are present. In this scenario sensing performance is analysed
with Rayleigh faded RSI and the expression for probability of false
alarm (pfa ), probability of miss detection (pmd ) and throughput are
derived.
for the ith user it is denoted as ri .
3. Dynamic buffer aided protocol
The main idea behind this protocol is to incorporate the asymmetric
traffic conditions which may arise in case many WAPs communicate
with NFC at different rates simultaneously. In the following we discuss
the frame design and proposed protocol (see Fig.1).
3.1. Frame Design

The rest of the paper is organized as follows. In Section 2, the
physical layer system model is given. Section 3 describes the proposed
protocol. The cross-layer performance is analysed in Section 4. Section 5
presents numerical results and the paper is concluded in Section 6. The
notations used in this paper are summarized in Table 1.
In this protocol we use five different types of control frames, U-RTS
(user-request to send), FD-CTS (FD-clear to send), U-CTS, FD-RTS, and
ACK (acknowledgement) as shown in Fig.2. Moreover, a modified
header is also considered in the proposed protocol. The description of
each of the control frames is given below:

2. Physical layer system model
A scattered network, consisting of an arbitrary number N of
randomly distributed IoT devices which communicate to the NFC
through a WAP, is considered. The ith and jth IoT devices are represented
by Ui and Uj , respectively, where i, j ∈ {1,2,⋯,N}, and are assumed to lie
in the WAP coverage area of radius R. The distance between Ui and Uj is
di,j , and di,j << di,AP , where di,AP represents the distance between ith
device and WAP. In order to reduce the delay and to enable the energy
detection based continuous sensing, the IoT nodes are assumed to have
FD abilities. We further assume that the traffic demand in the network is
surplus and all the devices have their data for transmission, however the
WAP can help only one of the users transmit its data to NFC. The channel
access among the multiple users is assumed to be performed on the basis
of proposed dynamic buffer aided MAC protocol. At physical layer, the
channel among ith user and WAP is represented by hi,AP and is assumed to
be distributed as the Rayleigh faded random variable. The RSI at the FD
users is modeled as the Rayleigh distributed random variable [9,10] and
1. U-RTS and FD-RTS: The U-RTS and FD-RTS frames are used by user
and WAP respectively. In U-RTS frame, an additional field of buffer
size is added. The additional field includes buffer state information of
the user which indicates the number of packets to be transmitted by
the user. This information helps WAP acknowledge the last packet in
the burst transmission rather than acknowledging every packet in
transmission.
2. FD-CTS and U-CTS: The FD-CTS and U-CTS frames are used by WAP
and user respectively. FD-CTS frames includes information of
contention window (CW) along with buffer size of WAP. CW aligns
the time period for data transmission between WAP and user. Also in
FD-CTS, information of dynamic buffer size at WAP is received by
user which helps incorporate the effect of traffic conditions between
WAP and NFC.
3. Header of user: It contains two fields related to device i.e. its
maximum buffer size and its rank. Rank is used by WAP to refer to a
device which can give the information of overheads using maximum
buffer size of the user.

3.2. Protocol Description

Table 1
Notations and definitions. Proposed protocol in general consists of two stages (i) control frames
transmission and (ii) data transmission stage as shown by example in
Notation Meaning
Fig. 3.
τ Sensing duration
ℛ Transmission rate of WAP
Ui , Uj ith and jth IoT device, respectively
di,j , hi,j Distance and channel coefficient between Ui and Uj , respectively
di,AP , hi,AP Distance and channel coefficient between Ui and WAP, respectively
ri SI channel coefficient at transmitter
xi , xj Transmitted symbols of Ui , Uj , respectively
Pi , Pj , PAP Transmitted powers of Ui , Uj ,WAP, respectively
Pref Reference received signal power
γ Sensing threshold
Γ(a, b) Incomplete Gamma function
K Total power of signal samples in one time slot
nt Total number of samples in one time slot
α Path loss exponent
pfa , pmd Probability of false alarm and miss detection, respectively
pt Transmission probability in a time slot
pc Probability that packet collides in a time slot
pnc Non-collision probability
ps Successful transmission probability
pe Probability that the channel is empty
pnet
c Total collision probability

⊤i Throughput of the device

LUI Length of successful transmission
Lc Average length of collision
Fig. 1. System model.

2
A. Maloo and P.K. Sharma
Fig. 2. Frame structure.
Fig. 3. The proposed dynamic buffer aided protocol.
1. Control frames transmission: This stage consists of two processes,
first, the sensing and contention and second, the frame
communication.
• Sensing and contention: When a user has the data for transmission,
it first senses the channel for a period of τ duration. If the channel is
found idle, the user waits for distributed inter frame space (DIFS)
interval, and generates a random back off time for additional delay
before transmission. This back off time is expressed as (R(CW) ×
τ), where, R(CW) is random number of time slots over {0, 1, ⋯,
CW} and CW is contention window which is set as 2C − 1 where C is
back off stage denoted by any positive integer, C ∈ {0, 1, ⋯, Cmax }.
The user suspends the back off timer prematurely if the channel is
sensed busy. Otherwise, at the end of back off timer the user gets
the access for the channel and starts the control frame trans­
mission. If the packet is detected from another user at the time of
transmission, user stops the transmission and immediately goes to
back off procedure and back off stage is set to min(C + 1, Cmax ).
• Frame communication process: The procedure for the transmission
is as follows:
Step 1: At first time instant user sends U-RTS to the WAP and at
the same time instant previously stored data in the buffer of WAP,
if any, is sent to NFC by WAP with transmission rate of ℛ.
Step 2: At second time instant, WAP sends FD-CTS which con­
tains its CW and variable buffer size (BAP ). BAP varies dynamically
according to the uplink transmission rate of WAP. The value of BAP
3
AEUE - International Journal of Electronics and Communications 128 (2021) 153488
is generated by WAP and is given as BAP = Lf + Lt , where Lf is the
free buffer size of WAP and Lt is length of data which is transmitted
to NFC in current time slot which can be given as ℛ × τ. Thus user
gets the information of available buffer at WAP through BAP .
Step 3: After DIFS, the user transmits data according to BAP
received. The user adjusts the transmission rate as per buffer in­
formation received from WAP in order to synchronize the trans­
mission. The same procedure is followed to set up secondary
transmission when WAP first gets access to channel for FD
communication.
2. Data Transmission: The data transmission from user is completed
when the user receives the acknowledgement (ACK) from WAP. The
exchange of ACK frames requires network allocation vector (NAV).
When control frames are exchanged then both user and WAP get to
know the duration field of the data frames and set the NAV accord­
ingly. So at the end of NAV, ACK frames are sent. If ACK is not
received successfully, user transmits the data again.
4. Performance analysis
4.1. Performance Analysis of Carrier Sensing
Received signal during sensing phase can be given as,
A. Maloo and P.K. Sharma AEUE - International Journal of Electronics and Communications 128 (2021) 153488

⎧ √̅̅̅̅̅ ∫b
1
⎨ Pi ri xi + ni ℋ0 where Γ(a, b) = Γ(a) 0 t a− 1 e− t dt is incomplete gamma function [11]. On
Y = √̅̅̅̅̅ ∑N− 1 √̅̅̅̅̅ (1)
⎩ Pi ri xi + Pj hi,j xj + ni ℋ1 . simplifying Eq. (9) and deriving the value of γ and substituting it in Eq.
j∕
=i
(10), we get
⎛ ⎞
For Ui user, ri , ni and xi are the SI channel coefficient, additive white
Gaussian noise and transmitted symbol, respectively. hi,j denotes Ray­ ⎜ [Γ− 1 (nt , 1 − pfa )][σ2ri + σ2μ ] ⎟
pmd = Γ⎜
⎝nt , ( ( ) )⎟ (11)
leigh fading channel coefficient between transmitting user Ui and user Uj ∑N− 1 d α ⎠
σ2ri + σ 2μ + Pref
where i, j ∈ {1, 2, ⋯, N}. Also Pi and Pj denotes transmitted power of i∕
=j di,j

transmitting user Ui and collision users Uj , respectively. After a feasible

FD transmission, signal-to-interference-plus-noise-ratio (SINR) is rep­ where Γ− 1 (a, b) is the inverse incomplete gamma function [11].
resented as Case (1) ℋ0 : When transmitting user alone occupies the Furthermore, averaging out pmd for radius (R) of WAP coverage area as
channel and user is transmitting to WAP devices are randomly and independently distributed we get,
∫ R ∫ R ∫ 2π ( )
PAP ⋅|hi,AP |2 2 x
SINR = (2) pmd 4 Γ nt , [Γ− 1 (nt , 1 − pfa ) − α ] r0 r1 dθdr 0 dr1 . (12)
σ2ri + σ 2μ πR 0 0 0 d +y

P ⋅d−
where x = Γ− 1 (nt , 1 − pfa ) σref2 +σ2 and
α
where, σ2μ denotes noise power and σ2ri = χ 2 Pi [6] and χ depends upon SI μ ri

cancellation technique. For Case (2) when Ui ∕ = Uj i.e. when trans­

σ2ri + σ2μ
mitting user has a collision with some other user y= ( ( ) ). (13)
∑N− 1 d α
PAP ⋅|hi,AP | 2 σ2ri + σ 2μ + Pref i∕
=j di,j
SINR = ∑N− 1
. (3)
j∕
=i Pj ⋅|hj,i | + σ 2ri + σ2μ
now,
Therefore after a feasible FD transmission without decoding failures, ∫ R2 ( )
1 x
value of SINR should be greater than some threshold and for error free pmd ≈ aΓ nt , [Γ− 1 (nt , 1 − pfa ) − ] da+
sensing a sensing procedure is applied which is based on energy detec­ R4 0 a+y
(14)
tion and is given as 1
∫ 2R2 ( )
(
x
)
2R2 − a Γ nt , [Γ− 1 (nt , 1 − pfa ) − ] da
∑
nt R4 R2 a+y
K= |Y(k)|2 (4)
k=1 The above integral can be approximated as,
( [ ])
where Y(k) is the kth sample of received signal and nt is the total number 1 x
pmd ≈ Γ nt , Γ− 1 (nt , 1 − pfa ) −
3 y + R2
of samples in t th time slot. The probability of false alarm and miss ( [ ]) (15)
detection can be written as, 2 0.5x
+ Γ nt , Γ− 1 (nt , 1 − pfa ) − .
3 0.5y + R2
pfa = Pr(K > γ)|ℋ0 (5)

pmd = Pr(K < γ)|ℋ1 . (6) 4.2. Throughput Analysis

Since the channels are Rayleigh fading channels, so sum of their sam­ In this section we analyse the throughput of the proposed protocol.
pling power (K) is gamma distributed. Probability density function We compute the transmission probability (pt ) of every device in any time
(PDF) of K can be given as slot along with probability of successful transmission. This analysis is
1 z(nt − 1) e ϕ
− z
based on Bianchis model[12] where pt is given as
fK (z) = ⋅ (7)
ϕnt Γ(nt ) 2(1 − 2pc )
pt = (16)
(1 − 2pc )(CW + 1) + pc ⋅CW(1 − (2pc )C )
where the parameter ϕ is given as
⎧ σ2 + σ2 ℋ0 where pc is the probability that packet collides in given time slot. So
⎪ μ
⎨ ri probability of devices finishing transmission without awareness of
ϕ= ∑N− 1 ( )α (8) collision in random time slot is given as pnc = 1 − pc . Let us consider the
⎪
⎩ σ 2 + σ2 + Pref d
ri μ ℋ1 . length of data packet as L. By considering Markov chain for discrete time
i∕
=j di,j
for the back off process and sensing errors which are possible during
We use a typical path loss Rayleigh fading channel as in [8], with transmission pnc can be derived as [8]
( )α
average power as Pref ddi,j where α denotes the path loss exponent and pnc = (1 − pt )N− 1 (1 − pfa )L

Pref is the reference received signal power at reference distance d. The pfa (1 − pfa )L − p2md (17)
+(N − 1)pt (1 − pt )N− 2 pmd .
and pmd can be written as, 1 − pfa − p2md
( )
pfa = 1 − Γ nt , 2
γ
(9) Since the back off mechanism in our protocol is same as that of con­
σri + σ 2μ ventional 802.11 WLAN therefore Markov model remains same for our
⎛ ⎞ protocol. Therefore successful transmission probability can be given as

⎜ γ ⎟ ps = Npt (1 − pt )N− 1
(18)
pmd = Γ⎜
⎝nt , ( ( )α ) ⎟
⎠ (10)
∑N− 1
and probability that the channel is empty is given as
d
σ + σμ + Pref
2
ri
2
i∕
=j di,j

pe = (1 − pt )N (19)

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A. Maloo and P.K. Sharma AEUE - International Journal of Electronics and Communications 128 (2021) 153488

Therefore net collision probability can be written as proposed protocol outperforms the previous related works in terms of
network throughput. This is due to our optimized framing structure
pnet
c = 1 − Npt (1 − pt )
N− 1
− (1 − pt )N . (20) which incorporates the dynamic buffer size. Moreover, FD-WiFi lags in
throughput due to the use of conventional CSMA/CD frame structure.
We can obtain the pt by substituting the value of pfa and pmd in (17). The For the fairness purpose we only included synchronised protocols in
throughput for a device when the channel is occupied for successful throughput comparisons.
transmission can be given as In Fig. 4b shows the plot between normalized throughput with
respect to transmission rate and maximum backoff stage when pfa is
E[Payload Length of device]
⊤i = 0.01. It can be seen that the throughput performance for proposed
E[Transmission Time for payload]
(21) protocol is higher than FD-WiFi [8] and collision does not happen at
ps ⋅LUi lower back off stage. However throughput decreases at higher back off
=
pe + ps (LUi + DIFS) + pnet
c (Lc + DIFS) stage as the length of successful transmission is 50 and after that false
alarm happens due to which users go to higher contention window.
where LUi is mean length of successful transmission and given as [12] Therefore, unsuccessful transmission at higher back off stage occurs and
throughput falls rapidly.
1 − (1 − pfa )L− 1
L Ui = + (1 − pfa )L− 1
(22) In Fig. 5a we show normalized throughput versus probability of false
pfa
alarm with different network transmission data rates when N is 25 and
Cmin and Cmax are set at 3 and 8, respectively. It can be seen that the
and Lc is average length of collision and given as
throughput increases at lower pfa and attains a maximum value and then
( ) ( 1) )
N p2 1 − p2(L− decreases further at higher pfa . Result show that there exist an optimal
Lc = 1 + p2t (1 − pt )N− 2 mdnet md
. (23)
N− 2 pc (1 − p2md ) values of pfa for the proposed protocol to achieve maximum throughput.
If we increase the data transmission rate our optimal values of
We can now analyse the throughput of the proposed protocol using LUi , throughput increases. This is due to the fact that length of successful
Lc and substituting them in (21). It can be seen in the analysis that the transmission depends upon pfa and data length L.
collision and successful transmission lengths are the key factors for In Fig. 5b we can see that the normalized throughput increases
improving throughput. monotonously as compared to FD-WiFi[8] and FD-MAC. It is due to the
fact that FD-MAC [5] is not synchronized thus it leads to higher collision
5. Numerical results of data as we increase data rate. The performance of proposed protocol is
also better due to the fact that as we increase transmission speed, syn­
5.1. Simulation Conditions chronization of data frames becomes important and the dynamic buffer
size and role of contention window in framing structure becomes more
Nodes in the network topology are randomly distributed in radius (R) critical. Due to this, the proposed protocol performs better in increasing
of 15 m. Transmitting power of node is set to 24 dBm. Packet size is set to the transmission rate of WAP.
1500 bytes and may vary according to simulation of different parame­ In Fig. 6 we plot the average end to end delay against the number of
ters. DIFS is set to standard 2 slots (30 μs). Frame slots are fixed at nodes in the network. It can be seen that the proposed protocol out­
standard 40 μs. Furthermore, nt is set as 100. CWmin and CWmax are set at performs other previous related works by achieving up to 35% lower
1 and 31, respectively. delays. This is due to proposed optimized framing structure and use of
burst transmission mode. For the fairness purpose, it can be observed
5.2. Simulation Results that results in Fig. 6 match to the scenario when the packet does not
suffer any failure in the path.
In Fig. 4a the network throughput [1,8] is plotted for different
number of users considering different path loss values. Path loss expo­
nent ’α’ values are assumed in range 2 to 3.5 [13]. We can see that

Fig. 4. Performance evaluation of Protocols: Throughput vs [(a) number of nodes; (b) back off stage].

5
A. Maloo and P.K. Sharma AEUE - International Journal of Electronics and Communications 128 (2021) 153488

Fig. 5. Performance evaluation of Protocols: Throughput vs [(a) false alarm probability; (b) rate of AP].

2016/000196) funded by the Science and Engineering Research Board,

Government of India.

Appendix A. Supplementary material

Supplementary data associated with this article can be found, in the

online version, at https://doi.org/10.1016/j.aeue.2020.153488.

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