In-home power line communication media access control protocol based on collision resolution

Most existing media access control (MAC) protocols in power line communication (PLC) networks just discard the colliding data packets when collision occurs. The collision deteriorates throughput and delay performance of system under high traffic conditions. This article presents a novel media access scheme with fast collision resolution for in-home power line networks. It works by first recognizing the colliding stations through detecting the inserted unique ID sequence ahead of data packets, then the source nodes retransmitting their packets immediately after the collision slot. The proposed protocol maintains the benefits of ALOHA systems. It needs no scheduling overhead and is suitable for bursty sources, such as multimedia data packets. Computer simulations have demonstrated that this approach can achieve high throughput due to its ability of resolving collisions.