Multiband CSMA/CA with RTS-CTS strategy

TL;DR

This paper introduces a multiband CSMA/CA protocol with RTS-CTS strategy for OFDMA systems, significantly reducing collision probabilities and improving throughput and latency in crowded networks.

Contribution

It proposes a novel multiband RTS/CTS scheme that asynchronously multiplexes RTS messages across multiple channels, enhancing collision avoidance in OFDMA MAC protocols.

Findings

Reduces collision probability during channel requests

Improves throughput in crowded network scenarios

Decreases latency with multiband RTS/CTS approach

Abstract

We present in this paper a new medium access control (MAC) scheme devoted to orthogonal frequency division multiple access (OFDMA) systems which aims at reducing collision probabilities during the channel request period. The proposed MAC relies on the classical carrier sense multiple access/collision avoidance (CSMA/CA) protocol with RTS / CTS ("Request To Send" / "Clear To Send") mechanism. The proposed method focus on the collision probability of RTS messages exploiting a multi-channel configuration for these messages while using the whole band for data transmissions. The protocol may be interpreted as an asynchronous frequency multiplexing of RTS messages. This method achieves strong performance gains in terms of throughput and latency especially in crowded networks. Index Terms-Carrier sense multiple access/collision avoidance (CSMA/CA), multiband, throughput, MAC protocol.