Link Adaptations and Protocol Design for Wireless Ad Hoc Networks

Submission deadline 05/24/2005
Wednesday, May 24, 2006
Marwan KRUNZ - University of Arizona

Despite extensive research, mobile ad hoc networks (MANETs) are still far from achieving their potential capacity. One main reason is that such networks are required to operate in a distributed fashion, utilizing only localized information for their operation and control. Adaptive medium access control (MAC) is a key to improving the performance of such networks. In this talk, I will focus on transmission power adaptation, which has great potential to increase the spatial throughput of a MANET and/or reduce its overall energy consumption. I will present several power-controlled MAC protocols that operate under different radio capabilities. First, I will present MAC designs that are aimed at omni-directional transmissions. The role of game theory in one of these designs will be highlighted. I will then consider MANETs with beam-forming (directional) capabilities and will introduce a power-controlled MAC protocol called LCAP for such networks. LCAP ameliorates several of the medium access problems that are caused by directional transmission/reception. It provides a mechanism for selecting the appropriate tradeoff between throughput and energy consumption. Next, I will present joint routing/MAC power-controlled designs for MANETs with MIMO (multi-input, multiple-output) capabilities and for MANETs that are equipped with cognitive radios. If time permits, I will highlight other research projects of the networking group at the UA.