An adaptive generalized transmission protocol for ad hoc networks

Wireless networking and group communication in combination allows groups of dispersed mobile users to collaborate. This paper presents AGENT, a medium access control (MAC) protocol that unifies point-to-point and multi-point transmission services to facilitate group communication in ad hoc networks. Analysis and experiments performed in a simulated ad hoc network demonstrate that AGENT exhibits reliable and stable performance with high spatial bandwidth reuse. Moreover, variation in the proportion of point-to-point and multi-point traffic is shown to have little impact on the overall performance of AGENT. Comparison with the other tested MAC protocols reveals that the performance of AGENT is superior, achieving higher channel utilization and lower access delay.