Investigation of MAC Protocol In mobile Ad hoc networks

Ms. Sunita Verma

Department of CTA

Shri G.S. Institute of Technology and Science

Introduction

In mobile ad hoc network CSMA and its variants have been widely used. The Mac layer’s
responsibility in a wireless network is to control the links between the nodes and collisions that occur
in transmission during time. An ad hoc network is a collection of nodes which works on the distributed
way. That is there no basic structure or we can say infrastructure among the nodes. Ad hoc networks
are modular in nature that is only partial information is known to each other. The MAC protocol for Ad
hoc is called CSMA/CA which is a part of IEEE 802.11 standard.

CSMA

Basically the principle of CSMA is very simple. Firstly a sender senses the a wire or coaxial cable or
simply say a medium. If the medium is not free , then the sender will waits until it becomes free or if
the medium is free the sender then easily starts transmitting data and continuous check out the medium.
But, f sender finds out any collision then it stops at that particular moment and sends a signal that is
what about the wired network.
In wireless networks, here the sender can apply carrier sense and detect an idle medium.
But there may be occurrence of hidden terminal problem. Here, the sender detects no collision and
assumed that the data is transmitted without error. But the collision might be occur which is not known
to the sender but actually have destroyed the data at the receiver.

Infrastructure network and ad hoc networks

The infrastructure network not only provides the access to the other networks. But also include
forwarding functions, medium access control etc. in these infrastructure networks the communication
takes place between wireless nodes and access points. Here, the access point not only adjust or control
the medium access but also act as a bridge to other wireless or wired networks. If we consult with the
design of infrastructure based wireless networks it is much simpler because in this the network
functionality lies between access points. In this the collision mostly never occurs but if occurs the
reason behind this will be that there is no coordination between wireless nodes and the access points.
Collision can be prevented if only the access points controls the medium access.

Ad hoc wireless networks

however do not need any infrastructure to work. Each node can directly communicate with other node
which is not done in infrastructure networks. But the main thing in Ad hoc network is that they can
only communicate if they can reach each other physically i.e. they should be in their physical range.
Every node has to implement a medium access mechanism which makes each node’s complexity
higher and there are some mechanisms also to handle the hidden terminal problems.

Now, Ad hoc network are supported by IEEE802.11. The IEE Standard 802.11
specifies the most famous family of WLANS in which many products are available. The primary goal
of the standard was the specification of a simple and robust WLAN which provides time bounded
services. The MAC layer should be capable of to deal with various physical layer and having a support
of power management to save battery power.

Hardware requirements:

Pentium processor P4
RAM 512
Hard Disk 80 gb
Monitor
Keyboard
Optical mouse

Software requirements:

Fedora 9
NCTUns 5.0 (simulator)

NCTUns 5.0
The NCTUns network simulator and emulator is a valuable tool for network research, planning, and
education. It is open-source software running on Linux and provides an easy-to-use integrated GUI
environment for users to efficiently conduct simulations/emulations. Many research institutes, industry
companies, and universities are using it for various purposes. NCTUns provides many unique and
important advantages over traditional network simulators and emulators. For example, NCTUns
directly uses the real-life TCP/IP protocol stack in the Linux kernel to conduct simulations.

Advantages:

1) Realistic network traffic can be generated by real life applications on NCTUns to generate more
realistic simulation results.

2) The performance of any real-life application can be easily evaluated on NCTUns under various
simulated network conditions.

3) Any network application program developed for a NCTUns device can be directly run up on a real-
life Linux device without any modification.

CONCLUSION

NCTUns is a novel network simulator and emulator that directly uses real-life application and Linux
protocol stack to generate high-fidelity simulation results. In its 4.0 release, many features relevant to
advance ITS researches have been presented in [6]. In its 5.0 release, NCTUns provides a complete
implementation of the emergent IEEE 802.11(p) and 1609 standards for wireless vehicular networks.
With continuous improvements, NCTUns has become a very valuable tool.