BIBD based Collision Free MAC protocols for wireless ad-hoc networks

Wireless Ad hoc networks represent a powerful telecommunication infrastructure that is being exploited for enabling general wireless networking connectivity. However, a wide deployment of wireless ad hoc networks relies on system architectures able to provide energetic optimization, high channel utilization, support for real time traffic, etc. In such a context, recently a Collision Free MAC protocol (CF-MAC), based on the theory of Balanced Incomplete Block Design (BIBD), has been proposed. Its effectiveness has been already investigated showing significant improvements compared to the Standard IEEE 802.11, in terms throughput, one-way packet delay, energy consumption and support of real time traffic. In this paper enhanced versions of CF-MAC have been considered with significant novelties that regard the introduction of variable time slot dimension, different management of Power Saving (PS) mechanisms, more efficient utilization of channel bandwidth, etc. The performance of these variants have been investigated by simple analytical models highlighting their improvements over basic C F-MAC protocol.