TC-Aloha: A Novel Access Scheme for Wireless Networks with Transmit-Only Nodes

In the recent past several network scenarios haveemerged where transmit-only nodes – i.e., nodes without receivingcapabilities – are deployed. Such nodes cannot perform carriersensing and cannot be synchronized. Therefore, they have toapply an Aloha-like medium access control. However, it is wellknown that Aloha achieves low goodput due to the possibility toincur in collisions, and this results in poor energy efficiency too.In order to achieve better performance, in this paper a schemecalled Timing-Channel Aloha (TC-Aloha) is introduced whichexploits the timing channel. The timing channel is the logicalcommunication channel established between a transmitter and areceiver in which the information is transferred by means of thetiming of events. Another feature of TC-Aloha is that it enablesmultiple transmissions of the same information to improve thecommunication reliability. In this paper the TC-Aloha scheme isdescribed in detail and an analytical framework is derived forthe evaluation of its performance. The numerical results assessthe advantages of TC-Aloha over traditional solutions.