A cooperative MAC protocol for lossy forwarding networks

We present in this paper a MAC layer protocol capable to cope with lossy links in interference-prone wireless environments. Our approach exploits the recent advances in information theory and physical layer coding by relaying at intermediate nodes corrupted messages. To do so, we rely on collaboration between nodes and on a complete rethinking of the header structures and wireless access techniques. Our ns-3 simulations show considerable gains in terms of throughput when compared to classical protocols in low SNR (high interference) situations. Our protocol also includes advanced features in order to mitigate interference and control the level of required reliability.