An Energy Efficient MAC for Wireless Full Duplex Networks

Full-duplex (FD) wireless communication is a key technology for enhancing the capacity of next- generation wireless networks. Previous studies have investigated FD wireless communication medium access control (MAC) schemes to double the existing network capacity. However, energy consumption and power saving mode (PSM) in wireless FD infrastructure networks have not been discussed extensively. Current implementations of 802.11 wireless infrastructure local area networks (WLANs) support PSM to extend the battery life of energy-limited mobile devices. In this paper, we propose a MAC protocol that supports PSM for wireless FD networks (FDPSM). FDPSM enables PSM for both half- duplex(HD)-capable clients and FD-capable clients in FD WLANs with FD-enabled access points (APs) by supporting not only bidirectional FD communication but also two- directional FD communication. In addition, FDPSM does not require any change in frame designs from the IEEE 802.11 standard. Simulation results show that the proposed method achieves a higher bit per energy than conventional FD communication. Thus, the proposed method facilitates energy-efficient wireless communication. Moreover, the request to send/clear to send (RTS/CTS) mechanism enhances the bit per energy. Specifically, the bit per energy achieved by FDPSM with RTS/CTS (FDPSM+) is approximately 10 times higher than that achieved by FDPSM when the data rate is 54 [Mbps] and the number of clients is 10.