Enhanced IEEE 802.15.3 MAC Protocol for Efficient Support of Multiple Simultaneously Operating Piconets

The IEEE 802.15.3 medium access control (MAC) protocol is designed to support high-data-rate wireless personal area networks (WPANs). This protocol operates on a time-division multiple-access (TDMA) basis within a piconet, which guarantees interference-free connections. However, it is found that the protocol is not efficient for simultaneously operating piconets (SOPs). In the current protocol, SOPs can be linked by a parent/child (P/C) or parent/neighbor (P/N) configuration for interference mitigation. However, the throughput is limited because the same superframe is shared by the P/C and P/N piconets. In this paper, an adaptive channel time allocation (CTA) is proposed, including public and normal CTAs, to adaptively manage the interpiconet interference in SOPs. In a mobile environment, the public and normal CTAs can also be adaptively allocated based on the link status in the SOPs, thereby reducing interference and improving the efficiency of channel time usage. The proposed scheme is able to achieve a greater throughput than the P/C and P/N configurations. In addition, the link success probability can also be kept at a high value. Based on the SOPs of the direct-sequence ultrawideband (DS-UWB) system, the simulation results demonstrate that the proposed scheme effectively supports the coexistence of SOPs. Furthermore, it not only significantly improves the throughput of the SOPs but also maintains a high link success probability.