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Fifth-generation (5G) and beyond networks are expected to serve large numbers of user equipments (UEs). Grant-based random access (RA) protocols are efficient when serving human users, typically with large data volumes to transmit. The strongest user collision resolution (SUCRe) is the first protocol that effectively uses the many antennas at the 5G base station (BS) to improve connectivity performance. In this paper, our proposal involves substituting the retransmission rule of the SUCRe protocol with a neural network (NN) to enhance the identification of the strongest user and resolve collisions in a decentralized manner on the UEs' side. The proposed NN-based procedure is trained offline, admitting different congestion levels of the system, aiming to obtain a single setup able to operate with different numbers of UEs. The numerical results indicate that our method attains substantial connectivity performance improvements compared to other protocols without requiring additional complexity or overhead. In addition, the proposed approach is robust regarding variations in the number of BS antennas and transmission power while improving energy efficiency by requiring fewer attempts on the RA stage. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Interference constitutes a major challenge to availability for communication networks operating over a shared medium. This paper proposes the medium access (MAC) protocol AntiJam, which achieves a high and fair throughput even in harsh environments. Our protocol mitigates internal interference, requiring no knowledge about the number of participants in the network. It is also robust to intentional and unintentional external interference, e.g., due to coexisting networks or jammers. We model external interference using a powerful reactive adversary that can jam a (1-\varepsilon)-portion of the time-steps, where 0<\varepsilon\leq 1 is an arbitrary constant. The adversary uses carrier sensing to make informed decisions on when it is most harmful to disrupt communications. Moreover, we allow the adversary to be adaptive and to have complete knowledge of the entire protocol history. AntiJam makes efficient use of the nonjammed time periods and achieves, if \varepsilon is constant, a \Theta(1)-competitive throughput. In addition, AntiJam features a low convergence time and has excellent fairness properties, such that channel access probabilities do not differ among nodes by more than a small constant factor. [ABSTRACT FROM PUBLISHER]

Most publications on the capacity and performance of wireless ad hoc networks share the underlying assumption of a uniform random distribution of nodes. In this paper, we study the effects of different node distributions on the local throughput of the slotted ALOHA MAC protocol. The throughput achieved in a network where the nodes are distributed according to a Poisson point process is used as a baseline performance measure for the comparison with other point distributions. We show that non-uniform random node distributions have a strong impact on the local throughput. This has also effects on the network capacity and performance. The results show that the node topology should be taken into account in more detailed analyses and simulations of ad hoc, sensor, and mesh networks. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The performance of multi-hop CSMA/CA networks has in most cases been evaluated via simulations, or analytically using a perfect collision channel model. Using such methods, one can neither have access to the capture nature of the terminals nor evaluate the performance of the network in a fading environment. In this paper a new analytical framework that takes into account these capture and fading effects is presented. The network investigated in this paper has an infinite number of nodes which is assumed to be spatially Poisson distributed. The approach is to develop analytical expressions for the transition probabilities between states of nodes in the network by approximating these states as a Markov chain. A fast algorithm to solve these equations is also given. Numerical results show that the model agrees with simulation results for both omni-directional networks and networks employing beamforming. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This paper presents integrated MAC/routing solutions for wireless sensor networks. At the MAC layer, every node accesses the channel according to its own cost by means of properly defined cost-dependent access probabilities. Costs are used to capture the suitability of a node to act as the relay and may depend on several factors such as residual energies, link conditions, queue state, etc. Our cost-aware MAC discriminates nodes right in the channel access phase by therefore assisting the forwarding decisions to be made at the routing level. In fact, nodes with high costs are ruled out from channel contention end are not considered when making routing decisions. This provides the routing layer with better relay candidates and, at the same time, decreases the number of in-range devices contending for the channel, thereby reducing interference. The proposed MAC scheme is coupled with routing over hop count (HC) coordinates. To this end, we introduce a set of rules designed to perform HC routing by exploiting first and second order neighborhood information. These are then integrated with our MAC scheme according to a cross-layer approach and their effectiveness is demonstrated by means of analysis and simulation. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]