Optimizing Distributed MAC Protocol for Multi-Hop Ultra-Wideband Wireless Networks

By considering the characteristics of Ultra- wideband (UWB) communications networks, ie., short transmission range, accurate ranging, and low transmission/interference power, we propose a Distributed, Exclusive region (DEX) based MAC protocol for multi-hop UWB based wireless networks. DEX can effectively explore the spatial multiplexing gain of UWB networks and allow users to efficiently and fairly share network resources in a distributed manner by reserving exclusive regions (ER) around the sender and receiver for data and acknowledgment (ACK) transmissions. We further quantify the network performance bounds and derive the optimal ER size to maximize the expected network transport throughput for a dense multi-hop UWB network. Extensive simulation results demonstrate the efficiency and effectiveness of the DEX protocol.