Carrier-sense multiple access (CSMA) is a medium access control (MAC) protocol in which a node verifies the absence of other traffic before transmitting on a shared transmission medium, such as an electrical bus or a band of the electromagnetic spectrum.
Under CSMA, a transmitter uses a carrier-sense mechanism to determine whether another transmission is in progress before initiating a transmission. That is, it tries to detect the presence of a carrier signal from another node before attempting to transmit. If a carrier is sensed, the node waits for the transmission in progress to end before initiating its own transmission. Using CSMA, multiple nodes may, in turn, send and receive on the same medium. Transmissions by one node are generally received by all other nodes connected to the medium.
Variations on basic CSMA include addition of collision-avoidance (CSMA/CA), collision-detection (CSMA/CD) and collision-resolution techniques.
Variations of CSMA use different algorithms to determine when to initiate transmission onto the shared medium. A key distinguishing feature of these algorithms is how aggressive or persistent they are in initiating transmission. A more aggressive algorithm may begin transmission more quickly and utilize a greater percentage of the available bandwidth of the medium. This is typically at the expense of an increased likelihood of collision with other transmitters.
When broadcasting over vehicular ad hoc networks, the original 1-persistence and p-persistence strategies often cause the broadcast storm problem.[ citation needed ] To improve performance, engineers developed three modified techniques: weighted p-persistence, slotted 1-persistence, and slotted p-persistence. [4] [5]
Carrier-sense multiple access with collision avoidance (CSMA/CA) in computer networking, is a network multiple access method in which carrier sensing is used, but nodes attempt to avoid collisions by beginning transmission only after the channel is sensed to be "idle". When they do transmit, nodes transmit their packet data in its entirety.
Carrier-sense multiple access with collision detection (CSMA/CD) is a medium access control (MAC) method used most notably in early Ethernet technology for local area networking. It uses carrier-sensing to defer transmissions until no other stations are transmitting. This is used in combination with collision detection in which a transmitting station detects collisions by sensing transmissions from other stations while it is transmitting a frame. When this collision condition is detected, the station stops transmitting that frame, transmits a jam signal, and then waits for a random time interval before trying to resend the frame.
In telecommunications and computer networks, a channel access method or multiple access method allows more than two terminals connected to the same transmission medium to transmit over it and to share its capacity. Examples of shared physical media are wireless networks, bus networks, ring networks and point-to-point links operating in half-duplex mode.
ALOHAnet, also known as the ALOHA System, or simply ALOHA, was a pioneering computer networking system developed at the University of Hawaii.
A collision domain is a network segment connected by a shared medium or through repeaters where simultaneous data transmissions collide with one another. The collision domain applies particularly in wireless networks, but also affected early versions of Ethernet. A network collision occurs when more than one device attempts to send a packet on a network segment at the same time. Members of a collision domain may be involved in collisions with one another. Devices outside the collision domain do not have collisions with those inside.
Distributed coordination function (DCF) is the fundamental medium access control (MAC) technique of the IEEE 802.11-based WLAN standard. DCF employs a carrier-sense multiple access with collision avoidance (CSMA/CA) with the binary exponential backoff algorithm.
In wireless networking, the hidden node problem or hidden terminal problem occurs when a node can communicate with a wireless access point (AP), but cannot directly communicate with other nodes that are communicating with that AP. This leads to difficulties in medium access control sublayer since multiple nodes can send data packets to the AP simultaneously, which creates interference at the AP resulting in no packet getting through.
A bus network is a network topology in which nodes are directly connected to a common half-duplex link called a bus.
RTS/CTS is the optional mechanism used by the 802.11 wireless networking protocol to reduce frame collisions introduced by the hidden node problem. Originally the protocol fixed the exposed node problem as well, but modern RTS/CTS includes ACKs and does not solve the exposed node problem.
A random-access channel (RACH) is a shared channel used by wireless terminals to access the mobile network for call set-up and bursty data transmission. Whenever mobile wants to make an MO call it schedules the RACH. RACH is transport-layer channel; the corresponding physical-layer channel is PRACH.
Exponential backoff is an algorithm that uses feedback to multiplicatively decrease the rate of some process, in order to gradually find an acceptable rate. These algorithms find usage in a wide range of systems and processes, with radio networks and computer networks being particularly notable.
A beacon frame is a type of management frame in IEEE 802.11 WLANs. It contains information about the network. Beacon frames are transmitted periodically; they serve to announce the presence of a wireless LAN and to provide a timing signal to synchronise communications with the devices using the network. In an infrastructurebasic service set (BSS), beacon frames are transmitted by the access point (AP). In ad hoc (IBSS) networks, beacon generation is distributed among the stations. For the 2.4 GHz spectrum, when having more than 15 SSIDs on non-overlapping channels, beacon frames start to consume significant amount of air time and degrade performance even when most of the networks are idle.
In computer networking, carrier-sense multiple access with collision avoidance and resolution using priorities (CSMA/CARP) is a channel access method. CSMA/CARP is similar in nature to the carrier-sense multiple access with collision detection (CSMA/CD) channel access method used in Ethernet networks, but CSMA/CARP provides no detection of network collisions. Instead of detecting network collisions, CSMA/CARP attempts to avoid collisions by using a system of transmission priorities.
Orthogonal frequency-division multiple access (OFDMA) is a multi-user version of the popular orthogonal frequency-division multiplexing (OFDM) digital modulation scheme. Multiple access is achieved in OFDMA by assigning subsets of subcarriers to individual users. This allows simultaneous low-data-rate transmission from several users.
Multiple Access with Collision Avoidance for Wireless (MACAW) is a slotted medium access control (MAC) protocol widely used in ad hoc networks. Furthermore, it is the foundation of many other MAC protocols used in wireless sensor networks (WSN). The IEEE 802.11 RTS/CTS mechanism is adopted from this protocol. It uses RTS-CTS-DS-DATA-ACK frame sequence for transferring data, sometimes preceded by an RTS-RRTS frame sequence, in view to provide solution to the hidden node problem. Although protocols based on MACAW, such as S-MAC, use carrier sense in addition to the RTS/CTS mechanism, MACAW does not make use of carrier sense.
The network allocation vector (NAV) is a virtual carrier-sensing mechanism used with wireless network protocols such as IEEE 802.11 (Wi-Fi) and IEEE 802.16 (WiMax). The virtual carrier-sensing is a logical abstraction which limits the need for physical carrier-sensing at the air interface in order to save power. The MAC layer frame headers contain a duration field that specifies the transmission time required for the frame, in which time the medium will be busy. The stations listening on the wireless medium read the Duration field and set their NAV, which is an indicator for a station on how long it must defer from accessing the medium.
In statistical time division multiplexing, contention is a media access method that is used to share a broadcast medium. In contention, any computer in the network can transmit data at any time.
Mobile Slotted Aloha (MS-Aloha) is a wireless network protocol proposed for applications such as vehicle networks.
Zebra Media Access Control (Z-MAC) is a network protocol for wireless sensor networks. It controls how a Media Access Control (MAC) accesses a common communication medium of a network.
An evolved wireless ad hoc network (EVAN) is a decentralized type of wireless network that compensates for the shortcomings of the existing wireless ad hoc network (WANET). An EVAN is ad hoc like a WANET because it does not rely on a pre-existing infrastructure, such as routers in wired networks or access points in wireless networks. Further advantages of WANETs over networks with a fixed topology include flexibility, scalability and lower administration costs. These characteristics of WANETs are maintained in EVAN as well. However, an EVAN has a physically separate resource management channel called tone channel, unlike existing WANETs. In WANETs, the data channel performs two roles: resource management and data transfer, but in EVAN, the data channel is used only for data transfer.