HP Labs Technical Reports

Robust Broadcast : Improving the Reliability of Broadcast Transmissions on CSMA/CA

Tourrilhes, Jean

HPL-98-38

Keyword(s): CSMA/CA; MAC; protocol; network; broadcast; wireless; 802.11; RTS/CTS

Abstract: This paper presents a scheme to improve the efficiency of radio MAC protocols in the case of broadcast and multicast transmissions, like TCP/IP multicasting. First, the reliability problems with broadcast packets and their consequences are analysed. Then the Robust Broadcast scheme is presented, which decreases the probability of loss of broadcast packets over MAC protocols based on CSMA/CA. Finally, the new protocol is simulated against other simple solutions to show how it performs.

5 Pages

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