MAC-LEAP: Multi-Antenna, Cross Layer, Energy Adaptive Protocol

With the continuous development of wireless networks, energy conservation and energy efficiency are becoming key factors in improving the network lifetime. In multi-antenna wireless networks, the energy conservation problem can be addressed using the trade-off between the transmit power and the circuit energy consumption. In this paper, we propose a cross layer protocol, MAC-LEAP, that selects the best transmission policy based on Multiple-Input Multiple-Output (MIMO) in both single-hop and multi-hop wireless networks. Various data transmission algorithms are presented in which many factors are considered in order to find the best transmission policy between each pair of nodes. An RTS/CTS handshake is used to exchange the required information to select the best transmission policy prior to data transmission. Moreover, we introduce a MIMO-based framework in Network Simulator 3 (ns-3) in which the wireless nodes may be equipped with more than one antenna. Using extensive simulations in ns-3, we compare the performance of MAC-LEAP with traditional protocols in terms of the network lifetime and the number of received packets. The simulation results show that MAC-LEAP outperforms the traditional protocols in both single-hop and multi-hop networks for various transmission distances and target Bit-Error-Rates (BER).