A new approach to MAC protocol optimization

A systematic and automatic method for dynamically optimizing medium access control (MAC) protocol parameters is presented. Our meta-protocol approach is capable of performing on-line optimization of critical MAC parameters without knowing in advance what network conditions will arise or how they may fluctuate over time. Furthermore, this dynamic optimization is achieved without any centralized control or exchange of control messages between nodes. The power of the new technique is demonstrated by two examples. In a LAN environment, it outperforms traditional contention based MAC protocols that adjust retransmission probabilities, e.g., employing binary exponential backoff. In a synchronous multi-hop environment, it automatically converges to the proper transmission schedule assignments for the actual node density