Achieving routing based medium access fairness in wireless ad-hoc networks

Ad-hoc networks axe dynamic multi-hop wireless networks that axe established by a set of mobile nodes on shared wireless channel. In that way, each mobile node becomes potentially a router and it is possible to dynamically establish routes between itself and nodes to which a route exists. Because each node, in addition to its own packets, has to forward packets belonging to other nodes, selfish behavior may represent a significant advantage for a node to save its battery power and reserve more bandwidth for its own traffic. However, if a large number of nodes start to behave non cooperatively, the network may break down completely, depriving all users of services. In order to avoid the misbehavior of certain nodes and alleviate the bandwidth share unfairness among all the mobile nodes, this paper describes and evaluates a routing-aware adaptive medium access control in IEEE 802.11 based wireless ad-hoc networks, which takes into account both node's own and routed data traffic, and try to give the same approximate bandwidth share to every mobile node to transmit its own traffic. Simulation results show that the proposed adaptive MAC scheme improves substantially the bandwidth share of the mobile nodes for their own traffic transmission while participating in the routing service.