An adaptive channel reservation MAC protocol based on forwarding traffic of key nodes

Ad Hoc networks with multi-hop topology are widely used in military and civilian applications. One challenge for Ad Hoc networks is to design efficient Media Access Control (MAC) protocols to ensure the quality of service (QoS). In Ad Hoc networks, certain nodes, referred to as key nodes, handle more forwarding traffic compared to surrounding nodes. The number of neighbor nodes around key nodes is often large, and the surrounding channel environment and interference are often more complex. As a result, key nodes often struggle to obtain sufficient channel access opportunities, which degrades end-to-end performance. To address this issue, we propose an adaptive algorithm designed to alleviate congestion at key nodes. Building on this algorithm, we present a channel reservation protocol tailored to the forwarding traffic of key nodes, referred to as FTKN-CRM. Nodes initiate reservations for future transmission time according to the buffer status before sending packets and then calculate the Weight of Reservation Ability (WRA). The node adaptively adjusts its reservation opportunity by comparing the WRA with neighbor nodes, thus improving the channel access efficiency and ensuring the transmission opportunity of key nodes. Extensive simulation confirms that our proposed FTKN-CRM provides significant improvements in end-to-end performance over the IEEE 802.11ax protocol and other reservation access protocols.