Optimizing Distributed MAC Protocol for Multi-Hop Ultra-Wideband Wireless Networks

By considering the characteristics of UltraWideBand (UWB) communications networks, i.e., short transmission range, accurate ranging, and low transmission/interference power, the authors propose a Distributed, EXclusive region (DEX) based MAC protocol for multi-hop UWB based wireless networks. DEX can effectively explore the spatial multiplexing gain of UWB networks and allow users to efficiently and fairly share network resources in a distributed manner by reserving Exclusive Regions (ER) around the sender and receiver for data and ACKnowledgment (ACK) transmissions.