Performance Improvement of MAC Protocols for Broadband Power-Line Access Networks of Developing Countries: A Case of Tanzania

This paper investigates the possibility of improving throughputs of some Media Access Controls protocols such as ALOHA, slotted ALOHA and Carrier Sense Multiple Access with Collision Avoidance with the aim of increasing the performance of Powerline access networks. In this investigation, the real Powerline network topology in Tanzania located in Dar es Salaam City, Kariakoo area was used as a case study. During this investigation, Wireshark Network Protocol Analyzer was used to analyze data traffic of similar existing network for projection purpose and then the data were simulated using MATLAB. This paper proposed and analyzed three improvement techniques based on collision domain, packet length and combination of the two. From the results, it was found that the throughput of Carrier Sense Multiple Access with Collision Avoidance protocol improved noticeably while ALOHA and slotted ALOHA showed insignificant changes especially when the hybrid techniques were employed.

A Novel Q-algorithm for EPC Global Class-1 Generation-2 Anti-collision Protocol

This paper provides a scheme to improve the read efficiency of anti-collision algorithm in EPCglobal UHF Class-1 Generation-2 RFID standard. In this standard, dynamic frame slotted ALOHA is specified to solve the anti-collision problem. Also, the Q-algorithm with a key parameter C is adopted to dynamically adjust the frame sizes. In the paper, we split the C parameter into two parameters to increase the read speed and derive the optimal values of the two parameters through simulations. The results indicate our method outperforms the original Q-algorithm.