Media Access Control (MAC) Protocols: An Overview

Abstract

Information Technology has grown rapidly leading to challenges with communicating information with nodes at remote locations. There are many communication media, and certain varieties of wired links such as coaxial cables, where multiple nodes can all be linked to hear each other's transmissions either properly, correctly or with some non-zero probability. Generally, there are two rudimentary ways of sharing such stations or media, which can be the time-sharing, and frequency sharing. This paper tackles the rudimentary question of how such one common communication channel also called a shared medium can be distributed among the distinct nodes with maximum productivity. It analyzes wireless sensor networks and its accompanying technologies sighting their pros and cons. Focusing on time-sharing, we examine methodically two prevalent approaches used in obtaining this which are either by time division (split) multiple access (TDMA) or contention protocols of which both approaches are widely being used in today’s systems. It also shows that with proper time of selecting the likelihood exigency of Tame Division Multiple Access’s (TDMAs), utilization tends to 1/e (37%) but also tends to increase collision. To adapt the transmitted message likelihood, a format for calculation was adopted. The idea was to seek to gather to the favorable point of value. Slotted Aloha has twice the utilization of Unslotted-Aloha when the numbers of accumulated nodes grow. The Study also shows that each node will stake transmission within sprinkling fixed number of slots and this is guaranteed when using a related distribution in a finite window, but this is not the case with geometric distribution.