|
This paper proposes MiniMesh, an opportunistic transmission mechanism for the
IEEE 802.15.3 medium access control (MAC) protocol; a key technology to
realizing wireless personal area networks (WPANs). MiniMesh exploits the
varying channel conditions to devices in a WPAN, thereby enabling the sender
and receiver of a flow to transmit at high data rates when the channel
condition is favorable. In addition, MiniMesh addresses the coverage problem
that limits peer-to-peer communications and is backward compatible with the
IEEE 802.15.3 specification. We have implemented MiniMesh and the DS-UWB
physical layer that offers data rates ranging from 28 Mbps to 1 Gbps in the
{\it ns-2} simulator. Our results show devices obtain at least a three fold
increase in throughput when only the piconet controller is serving as a relay;
further increases are possible with additional relays. Moreover, a flow
experiences faster recovery from packet loss and is able to maintain a high
throughput even when channel conditions worsen.
|