A heterogeneous medium access control (MAC) scheme (with both scheduled and random communications) is proposed for airborne networks. These networks have a hierarchical topology with a small number of powerful aircraft nodes with multibeam antennas and long-distance links at the higher level, and high-density unmanned aerial vehicle (UAV) nodes with single-beam directional antennas at the lower level. Our proposed MAC scheme has the following three parts: First, multibeam, long-distance MAC for aircraft to aircraft links: a dynamic, scheduled MAC is proposed to take advantage of the multibeam features to achieve high-throughput transmissions, and the beam locking/synchronization issues are solved; second, uplink MAC for UAV to aircraft communication: conventional IEEE 802.11n MAC is enhanced with fame aggregation and compressive-sensing-based request polling; and third, MAC for UAV to UAV links: IEEE 802.11e DCF MAC is enhanced through parameter adjustment for channel access. Our simulation results show the significant performance improvement over conventional MAC protocols.
Systematic Medium Access Control in Hierarchical Airborne Networks With Multibeam and Single-Beam Antennas
IEEE Transactions on Aerospace and Electronic Systems ; 55 , 2 ; 706-717
2019-04-01
5482607 byte
Article (Journal)
Electronic Resource
English
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