Abstract—Wireless Ad hoc networks represent a powerfultelecommunication infrastructure that is being exploited forenabling general wireless networking connectivity for avariety of significant applications, e.g., military applications,industrial automation, sensor networks, vehicular networks,applications in case of disaster, etc.The distributed and flexible architecture of wireless ad hocnetworks is a key factor, however, their wide deploymentrelies on protocols able to provide energetic optimization,high channel utilization, support for real time traffic, etc. Insuch a context, recently a Collision Free MAC protocol (CFMAC),based on the theory of Balanced Incomplete BlockDesign (BIBD), has been proposed. Its effectiveness has beenalready investigated showing significant improvementscompared to the Standard IEEE 802.11, in terms ofthroughput, one -way packet delay, energy consumption andsupport of real time traffic.In this paper enhanced versions of CF-MAC have beenconsidered with significant novelties regarding theintroduction of variable time slot dimension, differentmanagement of Power Saving (PS) mechanisms, moreefficient utilization of channel bandwidth, etc. Theperformance of these variants have been investigated bysimple analytical models, in terms of energy saving, channelutilization, average access delay, etc., highlighting theirimprovements over basic CF-MAC protocol. In addition,computer simulations have been exploited to study thesuitability of the proposed schemes to support VoIpapplications.

Index Terms—Wireless Ad Hoc Networks, Power Saving,Collision Free MAC Protocols, Balanced Incomplete BlockDesign (BIBD).

Cite: Pietro Camarda and Orazio Fiume, "Collision Free MAC Protocols for Wireless Ad Hoc Networks based on BIBD Architecture," Journal of Communications, vol. 2, no. 7, pp. 1-8, 2007.