An Adaptive Spatial Traffic Based MAC Protocol for Infrastructure Wireless Networks

Abstract

As per the Open Systems Interconnection (OSI) Model, the Medium Access Control (MAC) sublayer of the Data Link Layer is responsible for properly utilizing channel resources and allowing channel access to the nodes for data transmission. Random access, controlled access, and channelization protocols meet these requirements. In random access protocols, the probability of data frames colliding is high, whereas in controlled access protocols, control mechanisms may lead to high overhead in networks with low traffic loads. Reservation is a controlled access protocol in which mobile stations reserve time mini-slots for transmission. The control overhead can be quite large in reservation, especially when few active nodes exist. In such cases, throughput can be improved by opting for random access. Moreover, the reservation does not consider the number of data frames each node wishes to send. It also does not enforce fairness in the order in which the nodes transmit. The network traffic can be used to choose the optimal MAC protocol, but existing approaches calculate it based on the recent activity of the network and not the spatial arrangement of nodes. This paper proposes a graph-based approach (the Spatial Traffic Based MAC Protocol Selector—STBMPS) to determine the number of possible collisions in a network for a given time interval and use it as a parameter to select the best-performing MAC protocol for that interval. It also presents a Modified Reservation Scheme (MRS) that reduces idle time and enforces an impartial scheduling mechanism. The STBMPS and the MRS form the Adaptive Spatial Traffic Based MAC Protocol (A-STMAC). The model has been simulated using MATLAB and Python and the results have been used to evaluate its performance. © The Author(s), under exclusive licence to Springer Nature Singapore Pte Ltd. 2025.