IEEE TRANSACTIONS ON WIRELESS COMMUNICATIONS, VOL. 14, NO.

7, JULY 2015 3601

Power-Controlled Medium Access Control

Protocol for Full-Duplex WiFi Networks
Wooyeol Choi, Hyuk Lim, Member, IEEE, and Ashutosh Sabharwal, Fellow, IEEE

Abstract—Recent advances in signal processing have demon-

strated in-band full-duplex capability at WiFi ranges. In addition
to simultaneous two-way exchange between two nodes, full-duplex
access points can potentially support simultaneous uplink and
downlink flows. However, the atomic three-node topology, which
allows simultaneous uplink and downlink, leads to inter-client
interference. In this paper, we propose a random-access medium
access control protocol using distributed power control to manage
inter-client interference in wireless networks with full-duplex-
capable access points that serve half-duplex clients. Our key con-
tributions are two-fold. First, we identify the regimes in which
power control provides sum throughput gains for the three-node
atomic topology, with one uplink flow and one downlink flow.
Second, we develop and benchmark PoCMAC, a full 802.11-based
protocol that allows distributed selection of a three-node topology.
The proposed MAC protocol is shown to achieve higher capacity
as compared to an equivalent half-duplex counterpart, while main-
taining similar fairness characteristics in single contention domain Fig. 1. Uplink (C1 → AP) and downlink (AP → C4) network with full-duplex
networks. We carried out extensive simulations and software- AP and half-duplex clients.
defined radio-based experiments to evaluate the performance of
the proposed MAC protocol, which is shown to achieve a signif- The key challenge for the full-duplex MAC is to coordinate
icant improvement over its half-duplex counterpart in terms of
throughput performance. multiple simultaneous transmissions, which are made possible
by the new in-band full-duplex capability. Fig. 1 shows the
Index Terms—Full-duplex, power control, MAC protocol, wire- key challenge of inter-client interference with simultaneous
less network.
up/downlink in a network environment, when the uplink and
downlink flows involve different clients. The gray circle in
I. I NTRODUCTION
Fig. 1 denotes the transmission range of the full-duplex access

R ECENT work [1]–[6] has demonstrated in-band full-

duplex capability, i.e., the ability to transmit and receive
simultaneously in the same band through self-interference can-
cellation using multiple antennas. In fact, the ability to suppress
self-interference below the noise floor has been demonstrated,
thereby enabling near-ideal full-duplex capability [7]. To take
advantage of full-duplex capability in a multi-node network, it
is essential to have new medium access control (MAC) pro-
tocols, because full-duplex leads to new interference patterns
compared to current half-duplex communication networks.
Manuscript received August 19, 2014; revised December 23, 2014 and
February 16, 2015; accepted February 17, 2015. Date of publication
March 3, 2015; date of current version July 8, 2015. The work of
W. Choi and H. Lim was supported in part by the National Research
Foundation of Korea (NRF) grant funded by the Korea government (MSIP)
(2014R1A2A2A01006002). The work of A. Sabharwal was supported in part
by NSF grants CNS-1161596 and CNS-1314822. The associate editor coordi-
nating the review of this paper and approving it for publication was A. Banchs.
(Corresponding author: Hyuk Lim.)
W. Choi and H. Lim are with the School of Information and Communica-
tions, Gwangju Institute of Science and Technology (GIST), Gwangju 500-712,
Korea (e-mail: wychoi@gist.ac.kr; hlim@gist.ac.kr).
A. Sabharwal is with the Department of Electrical and Computer Engineer-
ing, Rice University, Houston, TX 77005 USA (e-mail: ashu@rice.edu).
Color versions of one or more of the figures in this paper are available online
at http://ieeexplore.ieee.org.
Digital Object Identifier 10.1109/TWC.2015.2408338
1536-1276 © 2015 IEEE. Translations and content mining are permitted for academic research only. Personal use is also permitted, but republication/redistribution
requires IEEE permission. See http://www.ieee.org/publications_standards/publications/rights/index.html for more information.
point (AP). Assume that Client 1 (C1) wants to transmit a
packet to the full-duplex AP, and that the full-duplex AP wants
to transmit a packet to Client 4 (C4), as shown by the black
line in the figure. In this case, the signal transmitted from C1
can interfere with other clients, particularly C4, which intends
to receive the signal from the AP. If C1 is located close to C4,
and the signal transmitted from C1 is very strong, C4 cannot
receive the signal transmitted from the AP owing to the inter-
client interference caused by the signal of C1.
In this paper, we consider wireless networks in which an AP
is capable of full-duplex communication and clients only use
half-duplex transmissions. To overcome the challenge of inter-
client interference shown in Fig. 1, we propose two concepts:
distributed interference measurement to modulate access proba-
bilities, and distributed power control to maximize the resulting
throughput. First, we propose the use of a signal-strength-based
back-off mechanism to provide a higher reception opportunity
to the client with a low inter-client interference. Using this
mechanism, the client with the lowest inter-client interference
has the smallest contention window size and is eventually
selected to receive a downlink transmission from the AP.
Second, to maximize the network throughput performance,
we formulate an optimization problem for calculating the op-
timal transmit powers of the AP and client. The optimization
3602 IEEE TRANSACTIONS ON WIRELESS COMMUNICATIONS, VOL. 14, NO. 7, JULY 2015
problem is then solved as part of the proposed MAC protocol,
namely, power-controlled MAC (PoCMAC), to coordinate the
uplink and downlink transmissions. By adjusting the transmit
powers of the AP and transmitter, the inter-client interference is
minimized, and higher sum throughput of uplink and downlink
transmissions can be achieved. PoCMAC uses additional short
control frames for selecting a receiver and an acknowledgement
frame for completing full-duplex transmissions. In spite of the
increased overhead due to the control frames, the proposed
MAC protocol can achieve a high performance gain because
the AP can additionally transmit a long data frame while it is
receiving an uplink transmission.
To verify the performance of the proposed MAC protocol,
we analyze the signal-to-interference-plus-noise ratio (SINR)
of uplink and downlink transmissions with respect to the inter-
client interference. Further, we compare the throughput and
fairness performance of the proposed MAC protocol with other
schemes through extensive simulations. In the simulations, the
proposed MAC protocol enhances the throughput performance
by around 180% as compared to an IEEE 802.11-based half-
duplex system, and by around 145% as compared to a full-
duplex system without any schemes such as power control and
receiver selection. In addition, we conduct software-defined
radio-based experiments to confirm the power control effect of
the proposed MAC protocol. The simulations and experiments
show that the proposed MAC protocol achieves better perfor-
mance than other schemes in terms of both throughput and
fairness by effectively managing the inter-client interference.
A. Related Work
Several MAC protocols for full-duplex wireless communica-
tion have been studied. Sen et al. proposed carrier sense multiple
access with collision notification (CSMA/CN) to immediately
notify a transmitter about a collision and stop the ongoing
transmission [8]. Jain et al. presented a simple MAC protocol to
mitigate hidden terminals using a busy tone [2]. Sahai et al. pro-
posed a full-duplex MAC (FD-MAC) protocol to evenly pro-
vide transmission opportunities and reduce collision probability
[3]. Duarte et al. proposed a MAC protocol based on the IEEE
802.11 distributed coordinated function (DCF) with request to
send (RTS) and clear to send (CTS) [5]. Tamaki et al. proposed
a relay full-duplex MAC (RFD-MAC) protocol to select the
next forwarding node using the 1-bit information slot in each
frame [9]. Zhou et al. proposed a rapid concurrent transmission
coordination (RCTC) protocol that enables exposed terminals
to realize concurrent transmission [10]. Most of these studies
considered a homogeneous scenario where all the clients have
full-duplex capability, which makes the transmission coordina-
tion problem much simpler because the clients easily share the
channel and transmission information with one another.
Inter-client interference among clients may significantly de-
teriorate the throughput performance of full-duplex wireless
networks because two clients are allowed to transmit simul-
taneously. Several studies have investigated the mitigation of
the inter-client interference problem. Goyal et al. proposed
a distributed MAC protocol that considers the traffic condi-
tion and inter-client interference [12]; this protocol supports
two-node bidirectional full-duplex transmissions and three-
node full-duplex transmissions where all the clients have full-
duplex capability. Ramirez et al. proposed a joint algorithm
to realize power allocation and routing in full-duplex wireless
relay networks [13]. They presented a power allocation scheme
considering both self-interference and interference among
neighboring nodes. Singh et al. proposed a distributed MAC
protocol with a selection scheme for a secondary receiver [14].
The selection scheme assigns weight values to candidates for
the secondary receiver. If a candidate node experiences more
successful transmissions, it has a higher weight value and
thus a greater chance to be selected as the secondary receiver.
Using this scheme, potential collisions at the secondary receiver
owing to the primary transmission could be mitigated.
One of the key shortcomings of the aforementioned studies is
that the leveraging of full-duplex AP capability is not supported
when all flows are half-duplex, which is possible in practical
wireless network environments supporting devices that do not
have full-duplex ability. In other words, the MAC protocols
proposed in previous studies can be applied only to a wireless
network where all the clients in the network have full-duplex
capability. However, in this paper, we consider a new MAC
protocol design to achieve the maximum performance gain in
practical wireless networks when only the AP has full-duplex
capability.
Bai et al. presented the achievable rate of a three-node wire-
less network with a full-duplex base station and two half-duplex
clients [15]. Although theirs was the first study to investigate
the mitigation of inter-client interference among half-duplex
clients, the authors leveraged an additional out-of-band side-
channel to manage inter-client interference; moreover, they did
not propose a MAC protocol for wireless networks where a
large number of clients are randomly distributed. In the present
study, we consider more practical scenarios of full-duplex wire-
less networks that consist of a full-duplex AP and half-duplex
clients without an additional channel, and we propose a new
MAC protocol that can be easily applied to practical wireless
networks.
The remainder of this paper is organized as follows.
Section II presents the system model for an in-band full-duplex
wireless network. Section III describes a new MAC protocol
that identifies the receiver with low inter-client interference
and controls the transmit powers of the AP and transmitter. To
obtain the optimal transmit powers, we formulate an optimiza-
tion problem to maximize the uplink and downlink capacity
based on the channel gain information of the AP and clients.
Then, we design the MAC protocol to coordinate the uplink and
downlink transmissions to fully exploit full-duplex capability.
Section IV presents the performance evaluation of the proposed
MAC protocol. Finally, Section V summarizes our findings and
concludes the paper.
II. S YSTEM M ODEL
We consider an in-band full-duplex wireless network that
consists of an AP with full-duplex capability and multiple
clients without full-duplex capability. Note that the AP is
easily equipped with elaborate antenna techniques and signal
CHOI et al.: POWER-CONTROLLED MEDIUM ACCESS CONTROL PROTOCOL FOR FULL-DUPLEX WiFi NETWORKS
Fig. 2. Wireless network model with a single full-duplex AP (separate trans-
mitting and receiving components), one transmitter, and one receiver.
processing modules for self-interference cancellation while
mobile clients with full-duplex capability are being incremen-
tally deployed. Therefore, we consider a full-duplex wireless
network where the AP can simultaneously transmit and receive
signals and the clients can either transmit or receive at a given
instant in time. In this paper, a transmitter (TX) refers to the
client transmitting signals to the AP, and a receiver (RX) refers
to the client receiving signals from the AP. Fig. 2 shows the
system model for a wireless network with a single full-duplex
AP, one TX, and one RX. Note that the single AP is depicted as
two separate components for transmitting and receiving signals.
The full-duplex AP and TX transmit the signals XAP and XT X ,
and the RX and full-duplex AP receive the signals YRX and
YAP , respectively. Gi,j is the channel gain from Client i to
Client j. Because a full-duplex AP transmits and receives a sig-
nal simultaneously, the transmitted signal of the AP is fed back
to the receiving RF chain of the AP, and it interferes with the
signal reception at the AP. Thus, there exists a channel from the
transmitting RF chain to the receiving RF chain of the AP, and
this channel is modeled as the self-interference channel gain
GAP,AP . The channel gains are modeled as complex Gaussian
random variables with zero mean, and they are assumed to be
constant over the duration of each transmission. As shown in
Fig. 2, the canceling signal for self-interference cancellation
in the full-duplex AP is modeled as τ · G  AP,AP · XAP , where
G AP,AP is the channel estimate of GAP,AP , and τ is a can-
cellation coefficient. Here, τ is determined by the degree of
self-interference cancellation, which depends on the analog and
digital cancellation techniques for full-duplex communication.
Note that the self-interference signal could be canceled by
subtracting the canceling signal from the received signal [7].
Then, the received signals YRX and YAP can be written as
YRX = GAP,RX · XAP + GT X,RX · XT X + NRX , (1)
YAP = GT X,AP · XT X + GAP,AP · XAP
−τ ·G AP,AP · XAP + NAP , (2)
where NRX and NAP are the white Gaussian noises at the RX
and AP, respectively, i.e., NRX ∼ CN (0, σRX 2
) and NAP ∼
CN (0, σAP ). For perfect self-interference cancellation, the
2
canceling signal should be equal to GAP,AP · XAP , i.e., the
AP already knows XAP , and what remains for perfect self-
interference cancellation is the accurate estimation of GAP,AP
and its compensation with gain control. If the self-interference
cancellation is imperfect, GAP,AP · XAP − τ · G  AP,AP · XAP
3603
can be a non-zero value. However, if the self-interference is
very small compared to the received signal of the AP, we
will consider it negligible and ignore it. We define α as the
suppression level of self-interference cancellation, and it can
|GAP,AP |2
be expressed as α = .
AP,AP |2
|GAP,AP −τ ·G
For the successful reception of uplink and downlink trans-
missions, the minimum SINR of YRX and YAP should be
higher than the SINR threshold γ. Although this model in-
herently guarantees only the minimum rate, it is possible that
higher SINR will be achievable in some cases, and hence,
higher rates can be utilized. Let Pr,i→j denote the received
power at Client j due to the signal transmitted by Client i, and
let Pr,SI denote the self-interference power for the AP. Pr,i→j
and Pr,SI are given by
 
Pr,i→j = |Gi,j |2 · E |Xi |2 = |Gi,j |2 · Pt,i , (3)
 
Pr,SI = |Gi,j | · E |XAP | = |GAP,AP | · Pt,AP , (4)
2 2 2
where Pt,i is the transmit power of Client i. Thus, the SINRs of
YRX and YAP can be expressed as
Pr,AP →RX
SINRRX = , (5)
Pr,T X→RX + NRX
Pr,T X→AP
SINRAP = Pr,SI . (6)
α + NAP
Then, the conditions for successful transmission from the AP to
the RX and from the TX to the AP are respectively given by
SINRRX ≥ γ, (7)
SINRAP ≥ γ. (8)
In addition, from (5) and (6), we define the sum rate Rsum as
the achievable sum rate of the uplink and downlink transmis-
sions at the AP as follows.
Rsum = log2 (1+SINRUplink )+log2 (1+SINRDownlink ), (9)
where SINRUplink and SINRDownlink are the SINRs of the up-
link and downlink transmissions, which correspond to SINRAP
in (5) and SINRRX in (6), respectively.
III. P O CMAC: F ULL -D UPLEX MAC P ROTOCOL
In this section, we describe our power-controlled MAC pro-
tocol (PoCMAC) for in-band full-duplex wireless networks.
Before providing a detailed description of PoCMAC, we con-
sider how to increase the sum rate of the uplink and downlink
transmissions at the AP in a full-duplex wireless environment.
A. A Motivating Numerical Example
Fig. 3 shows the sum rate of the wireless network, where AP
and TX are located at (0, 0) and (−50, 0), respectively. The sum
rate Rsum is computed with respect to the position of the RX,
which changes within a 200 × 200 m region. Fig. 3(a) shows
that Rsum is maximized when the RX is far from the TX and
close to the AP. When the inter-client interference signal from
the TX is weak and the signal from the AP is strong, the RX
3604
Fig. 3. Sum rate Rsum with respect to (a) the position of the RX and (b) RSS values at the RX for the signals from the AP and TX, when the AP and TX are
located at (0, 0) and (−50, 0), respectively. (a) Position of RX. (b) RSS at RX for the signals from AP and TX.
can have high SINRDownlink , and thus, Rsum becomes high.
On the other hand, if the signal from the TX is strong, the
RX cannot receive the signal transmitted by the AP because
the signal from the TX is an inter-client interference signal
at the RX. In this case, Rsum decreases. In Fig. 3(b), Rsum
is redrawn with respect to the received signal strength (RSS)
values at the RX. Depending on the position of the RX, the RSS
values at the RX for signals from the AP and TX lie in the range
of [−26, −15] dBm. Fig. 3(b) shows that Rsum is maximized
when the RSS values from the AP and TX are the highest and
lowest, respectively.
The above numerical example is indicative of the following
general result: when two transmitters, i.e., the AP and TX, are
fixed, then the RX should be carefully selected from among
multiple candidate clients because the sum rate of a full-duplex
wireless network changes according to the position of the
RX. Therefore, we propose a signal-strength-based back-off
mechanism for selecting the RX to achieve a low inter-client
interference. In addition, if the AP transmits signals using the
maximum transmit power, the strength of self-interference at
the AP increases owing to the strong signal transmitted from
the AP itself. As a result, the self-interference signal is not
sufficiently suppressed, and the AP cannot decode signals from
the TX. If the TX transmits signals using the maximum transmit
power, the RX undergoes strong inter-client interference from
the TX and cannot receive signals from the AP. The above
conclusion is our motivation for adapting the transmit powers
of the AP and TX to maximize the sum capacity.
In summary, PoCMAC includes (i) a contention-based re-
ceiver selection scheme to provide a higher reception oppor-
tunity to clients with low interference and (ii) a transmit power
adjustment scheme for computing the optimal transmit powers
of the AP and TX. PoCMAC needs to collect the channel
gains, such as GT X,AP , GAP,RX , and GT X,RX , and these
channel gains can be obtained when control frames are ex-
changed between the AP and clients. For example, the channel
gain from the TX to the AP (GT X,AP ) is obtained when the
TX transmits a control frame to the AP for a transmission
request. New control frames designed for PoCMAC will be
explained in detail in Section III-D. Thus, the AP and RX can
successfully decode signals without significant interference,
IEEE TRANSACTIONS ON WIRELESS COMMUNICATIONS, VOL. 14, NO. 7, JULY 2015
and therefore, the AP can fully exploit full-duplex capability
for higher throughput performance. PoCMAC performs the
following key functions: 1) collecting information on the inter-
client interference between the TX and the RX, 2) determining
the RX from among the clients, and 3) calculating and notifying
the optimal transmit powers for the AP and TX.
B. Received-Signal-Strength-Based (RSSB) Contention for
Receiver Selection
Clients that want to transmit DATA frames to the AP should
first transmit an RTS frame to the AP. To transmit the RTS
frame, all the clients have to perform a back-off mechanism
to avoid collisions before transmitting the RTS frame. Each
client chooses a random back-off number within the range of
0 to (CWmin ), where CWmin is an initial contention window
size, and then attempts to transmit the RTS frame after waiting
for a random time period. If more than two clients choose
the same back-off number, RTS frame collisions will occur. In
this case, the clients perform the back-off mechanism again,
and the contention window size is doubled. This is called a
binary exponential back-off mechanism, and it is used in carrier
sensing multiple access with collision avoidance (CSMA/CA)
for IEEE 802.11.
In full-duplex communication, we need to select a receiver
for the downlink transmission and a transmitter for the uplink
transmission. As described above, the performance of uplink
and downlink transmissions during full-duplex communication
is highly dependent on the RSS between the AP and the RX and
that between the TX and the RX. We propose a received-signal-
strength-based (RSSB) contention mechanism for selecting the
receiver for the downlink transmission. Note that the contention
mechanism for uplink transmissions is nearly the same as
IEEE 802.11 DCF with RTS/CTS handshake, and an advanced
mechanism that adaptively adjusts the contention window size
can be applied for further performance enhancement.
From Section II, the received power from Client i at Client
j is given by Pr,i→j = |Gi,j |2 · Pt,i . Client i, which is one of
the candidates for the RX, can measure the received power
Pr,T X→i and the received power Pr,AP →i when control frames
are exchanged between the AP and clients. For example, the TX
CHOI et al.: POWER-CONTROLLED MEDIUM ACCESS CONTROL PROTOCOL FOR FULL-DUPLEX WiFi NETWORKS 3605

transmits an RTS frame to the AP for a transmission request.

When the AP and the RX candidates receive or overhear
the RTS frame, they can measure the received power for the
RTS frame from the TX. Using Pr,T X→i and Pr,AP →i , an
RSSB contention window is derived for receiver selection. This
contention window should enable the candidate client with
low inter-client interference from the TX (Pr,T X→i ) and high
received power from the AP (Pr,AP →i ) to have a high channel
access probability for receiving the downlink transmission.
Therefore, we define the contention window CWRSSB,i of
Client i for the RSSB contention mechanism as follows
  
Pr,AP →i
CWRSSB,i = ωα − ωβ · log2 1 + , (10)
Pr,T X→i

ωα and ωβ are
where
the constants for a linear mapping from
Pr,AP →i
log2 1 + Pr,T X→i to an integer value for the contention
window in the range
of [0, CWmin ]. Note that the value of Fig. 4. Feasible region and optimal point to satisfy conditions (11) and (12)
Pr,AP →i
log2 1 + Pr,T X→i may change owing to various factors in a
wireless network environment.
Pr,AP →i
A high Pr,T X→i
implies that Client i has a high RSS from the
AP and low inter-client interference by the TX; therefore, we
use the CWRSSB,i of Client i for providing a higher reception
probability to the client with a high RSS from the AP and low
Pr,AP →i
inter-client interference. Thus, CWRSSB,i decreases as Pr,T X→i
increases, and as a result, the probability that the client with a
small contention window size can access the wireless channel
first, increases. Using the RSSB contention mechanism to de-
termine the receiver, PoCMAC enables the candidate client that
can maximize full-duplex capability to have a higher probabil-
ity of receiving the downlink transmission from the AP. During
this contention, collisions among candidate clients may occur
if more than two clients choose the same back-off number.
In this case, PoCMAC fails to select the RX for downlink
transmission, and the TX that successfully transmitted RTS to
and received CTS from the AP performs the half-duplex uplink
transmission.
with respect to the transmit powers of the AP and TX.
The transmit power control that determines the transmit
powers of the AP and TX should 1) facilitate successful simul-
taneous uplink and downlink transmissions, and 2) enable each
transmission to achieve the maximum SINR value. Fig. 4 shows
the feasible region and optimal point of transmit powers with
respect to the transmit power of the AP and TX. The blue line
is the upper bound that satisfies (11), and the green line is the
lower bound that satisfies (12). The gray-shaded area is the fea-
sible region that simultaneously satisfies both (11) and (12), i.e.,
the transmit powers of the AP and TX in the region ensure the
feasibility of simultaneous uplink and downlink transmissions.
Within the feasible region, we need to find the optimal transmit
powers of the AP and TX to maximize the SINR values of the
uplink and downlink transmissions. Therefore, we formulate an
optimization problem for the transmit powers of the AP and TX
as follows
∗
Pt,i = arg max (min (SINRUplink , SINRDownlink ))
Pt,i

SINRUplink ≥ γ
C. Transmit Power Adjustment subject to SINRDownlink ≥ γ , for i ∈ {AP, T X}. (13)
After the RX is determined by the RSSB contention mech- 0 ≤ Pt,i ≤ Pmax
anism, the AP calculates the optimal transmit powers for itself
The optimization problem attempts to maximize the minimum
and the TX using the information about the received powers
SINR of the uplink and downlink transmissions while satisfying
from the TX and RX, the inter-client interference from the TX
the SINR constraints. To effectively solve this max-min opti-
to the RX, and the self-interference in the AP. This transmit
mization problem, (13) is rewritten as a linear programming
power adjustment scheme can reduce the inter-client interfer-
problem by introducing a new variable K. Then, the linear
ence and prevent collisions at the RX. In Section II, we stated
programming problem for (13) can be expressed as follows.
the conditions required for successful uplink and downlink
transmissions in (7) and (8), i.e., for successful transmissions, ∗
Pt,i = arg max K
the SINR of the uplink and downlink transmissions should Pt,i
be higher than the SINR threshold γ. From Section II, the
SINRU plink ≥ K
conditions can be rewritten as
SINRDownlink ≥ K
subject to , for i ∈ {AP, T X}. (14)
|GT X,AP |2 · Pt,T X K≥γ
SINRUplink = |GAP,AP |2
≥ γ, (11) 0 ≤ Pt,i ≤ Pmax
α · Pt,AP + NAP
|GAP,RX |2 · Pt,AP To maximize K, which is a quantity dependent on
SINRDownlink = ≥ γ. (12)
|GT X,RX |2 · Pt,T X + NRX SINRUplink and SINRDownlink , the optimal solution should
3606 IEEE TRANSACTIONS ON WIRELESS COMMUNICATIONS, VOL. 14, NO. 7, JULY 2015

Fig. 6. Header of DATA frame for AP and client. (a) Header of AP (HA).
(b) Header of client (HC).

D. Description of PoCMAC
We have proposed the RSSB contention scheme for receiver
selection and the transmit power adjustment scheme to compute
the optimal transmit powers of the AP and TX. In this section,
we describe newly designed frame structures and detailed pro-
cedures of the TX, RX, and AP for performing both schemes in
PoCMAC.
1) Frame Structures: PoCMAC uses five types of control
Fig. 5. Control frame structures. (a) RTS. (b) CTS-Uplink (CTS-U). (c) CTS- frames and two types of DATA frame headers, as shown in
Downlink (CTS-D). (d) ACK-Uplink (ACK-U). (e) ACK-Downlink (ACK-D).
Figs. 5 and 6. The five control frames are RTS, CTS-Uplink
(CTS-U), CTS-Downlink (CTS-D), ACK-Downlink (ACK-D),
make SINRUplink and SINRDownlink equal to each other. Then, and ACK-Uplink (ACK-U), and the two types of DATA frame
the inequality SINR constraints can be expressed as a function headers are the header of the AP (HA) and the header of the
of K as follows: client (HC). Among these control frames and DATA frame
|GT X,AP |2 · Pt,T X headers, RTS, ACK-D, and HC have the same structures as
SINRUplink = |GAP,AP |2
=K (15) RTS, ACK, and the DATA frame headers of the IEEE 802.11
α · Pt,AP + NAP standard, respectively. The frame structures of CTS-U, CTS-D,
|GAP,RX |2 · Pt,AP ACK-U, and HA are newly designed in this study.
SINRDownlink = =K (16) • The CTS-U frame is transmitted by the AP after it receives
|GT X,RX |2 · Pt,T X + NRX
an RTS frame from a client. This frame gives permission
From (15) and (16), the transmit powers Pt,AP and Pt,T X are to perform the uplink DATA transmission to the client.
given by In addition, using the CTS-U frame, the AP informs the
  candidate clients that it wants to transmit the DATA frame.
KNRX |GT X,AP |2 + K|GT X,RX |2 The number of RX candidates that can be listed in the
Pt,AP = ,
|GT X,AP |2 |GAP,RX |2 − Kα |GT X,RX |2 |GAP,AP |2
2
CTS-U frame is set to M . The AP can simply choose
M clients to which the first M frames in its transmission
(17) queue belong.1 The AP designates multiple candidates for
 
KNAP |GAP,RX | + K α |GAP,AP |
2 2 the RX to exploit the diversity of receivers. If only a single
Pt,T X = . client were allowed to be listed as an RX candidate and it
|GT X,AP |2 |GAP,RX |2 − Kα |GT X,RX |2 |GAP,AP |2
2

happened to be close to the TX, it would not be possible to

(18)
In (17) and (18), Pt,AP and Pt,T X are increasing functions
of K. By gradually increasing K, we can find the optimal
∗ ∗
transmit powers Pt,AP and Pt,T X that satisfy the constraints
in (14). As shown in Fig. 4, the red line is a set of points
(Pt,T X , Pt,AP ) that satisfy both (17) and (18). The optimal
∗ ∗
point (Pt,T X , Pt,AP ) is obtained by increasing K. The optimal
transmit powers solve the linear programming problem to max-
imize the SINRs of the uplink and downlink transmissions.
In the optimization, the transmit powers are assumed to be
continuous values. However, in most communication systems,
they are incrementally increased/decreased by a fixed integer
value. For example, in the communication devices used for our
experiments, the transmit powers are discrete integers in the
range of [−12, 19] dBm. In practice, the optimization can be
reformulated as an integer programming problem.
successfully receive the DATA frame from the AP owing
to strong interference from the TX.
• The CTS-D frame is transmitted by the candidate client
that wins the RSSB contention after the AP broadcasts
a CTS-U frame. The CTS-D frame sent by a candidate
client informs the AP and the other RX candidates that
it has been selected as the RX that is to receive a DATA
frame from the AP. Note that if a client overhears the
CTS-U frame, it knows which client has been nominated
as the RX. This frame includes the address of the winning
candidate and the inter-client interference information,
which is the received power of the RTS frame transmitted
1 M is set to two in our implementation. If more than two candidates are
allowed to be listed in the frame, it increases the opportunity to select the better
RX with a lower inter-client interference, but the overhead for CTS-U frame
increases. The size of CTS-U frame increases by six bytes for each candidate.
CHOI et al.: POWER-CONTROLLED MEDIUM ACCESS CONTROL PROTOCOL FOR FULL-DUPLEX WiFi NETWORKS
Fig. 7. Operation example of the full-duplex AP and clients. (1st transmission period: C1-TX, C4-RX/2nd transmission period: C5-TX, C2-RX).
from the TX. If the RX cannot overhear the RTS frame
from the TX and cannot measure the signal strength from
the TX, the interference field is filled with zeroes.
• The ACK-U frame is transmitted by the AP after complet-
ing the uplink DATA reception from the TX. If the AP
successfully receives the uplink DATA frame, it transmits
the ACK-U frame with the ACK field set to “1”; otherwise,
it transmits the ACK-U frame with the ACK field set to
“0.” The AP always transmits the ACK-U frame regardless
of the success status of the uplink DATA frame. This is
done to inform all the clients that the transmission period
has ended. The TX can confirm the success of its own
uplink DATA transmission via the ACK field in the ACK-
U frame transmitted from the AP, and the other clients can
detect the completion of the transmission period via the
ACK-U frame transmitted from the AP.
• The HA frame is the header of the DATA frame transmit-
ted by the AP. Unlike the HC frame of the DATA frame
transmitted by the clients, the HA frame has a field that
stores information on the transmit power to be used when
the TX transmits the DATA frame. When the AP transmits
the DATA frame to the RX, the TX can overhear the HA
frame of this DATA frame and identify the transmit power
calculated by the AP. Then, the TX starts its own uplink
DATA transmission to the AP with the instructed transmit
power.
2) Proposed PoCMAC: Using the control frames and head-
ers, the AP collects the inter-client interference information
from the RX, calculates the transmit powers for itself and the
TX based on the collected information, and then informs the
TX of the transmit power for the uplink DATA transmission.
Fig. 7 shows an example of the operation of the TX, RX, and
AP. During the first transmission period, C1 wins the contention
against C3 and C5, and C1 is the TX that transmits to the
AP. The AP broadcasts a CTS-U control frame, which is an
acknowledgement to C1, and includes the information that it
wants to transmit a DATA frame to C2 or C4. From the con-
3607
tention for the receiver selection, which has been described in
Section III-B, C4 is determined as the RX, and it then transmits
a CTS-D frame with the inter-client interference information to
the AP. Using the estimated and collected information, the AP
calculates the optimal transmit powers for the TX and itself,
and then, it starts a downlink DATA transmission that is used
to inform the TX of its transmit power. Then, C1 can start an
uplink DATA transmission with the instructed transmit power.
Finally, C4 transmits an ACK-D frame to the AP, and the AP
also transmits an ACK-U frame to C1. The next transmission
period will start after a distributed inter-frame space (DIFS).
The detailed procedures of the TX, RX, and AP under the
proposed PoCMAC protocol are described as follows.
• TX side
(1) All clients that want to transmit a DATA frame
perform a back-off mechanism.
(2) The client that wins the contention transmits an RTS
frame with an initial transmit power to the AP and
waits for a CTS-U frame from the AP.
(3-1) If the client that transmitted the RTS frame receives
the CTS-U frame, it is confirmed as the TX and
waits for the HA of the DATA frame.
(3-2) The other clients set a network allocation vector
(NAV) until the end of this transmission period, and
defer their transmission.
(4) As soon as the TX receives the HA of the DATA
frame from the AP, it starts an uplink DATA trans-
mission with the transmit power specified in the
received HA frame.
(5) After completing the uplink DATA transmission, the
TX waits for an ACK-U frame from the AP.
(6-1) After receiving the ACK-U frame, if the acknowl-
edgement bit of the ACK-U frame is “1”, the TX
can verify that the uplink DATA transmission was
successful, and then return to the initial state.
(6-2) Otherwise, the TX returns to the initial state for
retransmission.
3608 IEEE TRANSACTIONS ON WIRELESS COMMUNICATIONS, VOL. 14, NO. 7, JULY 2015
• RX side
(1) All clients that do not want to transmit a DATA
frame to the AP, or that lose the contention, continue
to overhear the RTS frame transmitted from other
clients or wait for a CTS-U frame from the AP.
(2) After the clients overhear the CTS-U frame from the
AP, they can identify the clients that are nominated
as the RX candidates.
(3-1) If the client is one of the candidates for the RX, it
performs the RSSB contention mechanism.
(3-2) Otherwise, it sets an NAV until the end of this trans-
mission period, and waits until all the transmissions
are completed.
(4) The client that wins the contention among the can-
didates transmits a CTS-D frame, including the in-
formation on the inter-client interference from the
TX, and waits for the HA of the DATA frame.
(5-1) If the client that transmitted the CTS-D frame re-
ceives the HA frame of the DATA frame, the client
is considered to be the RX and starts the downlink
DATA reception.
(5-2) The other clients set an NAV until the end of this
transmission period, and wait until all the transmis-
sions are completed.
(6-1) If the downlink DATA reception is successful, the
RX transmits an ACK-D frame to the AP.
(6-2) Otherwise, the RX does not transmit the ACK-D
frame to the AP.
(7) After overhearing an ACK-U frame from the AP, the
RX returns to the initial state.
• AP side
(1) The AP waits for an RTS frame from clients that
want to transmit a DATA frame.
(2) After receiving the RTS frame, the AP selects a
client as the TX, transmits a CTS-U frame including
the address of the TX and the addresses of the RX
candidates to which the AP wants to transmit the
DATA frame, and waits for a CTS-D frame.
(3) After receiving the CTS-D frame, the AP can cal-
culate the optimal transmit powers for the AP and
TX; then, it starts the transmission of HA, which
includes the transmit power obtained for the TX,
with the transmit power obtained for itself.
(4) During the transmission of the HA, the AP starts
self-interference cancellation to receive the DATA
frame from the TX and stabilizes interference
nulling for the receiving signal.
(5) After transmitting the HA and stabilizing the inter-
ference nulling, the AP continues the downlink
DATA transmission to the RX and starts the uplink
DATA reception from the TX.
(6) After transmitting and receiving the DATA frames
simultaneously, the AP aits for an ACK-D frame
from the RX.
(7-1) If the ACK-D frame is received, the AP can de-
termine that the downlink DATA transmission was
successful, and then, it transmits an ACK-U frame
with ‘1’ acknowledgement bit.
(7-2) Otherwise, the AP determines that the downlink
DATA transmission has failed, and then, it transmits
the ACK-U frame with ‘0’ acknowledgement bit.
(8) After transmitting the ACK-U frame, the AP returns
to the initial state.
Note that the AP starts the downlink DATA transmission to
the RX earlier than the uplink DATA transmission from the TX.
There are two reasons for this. First, the AP has to notify the
TX of the optimal transmit power using an HA frame of the
downlink DATA frame before the TX starts the uplink DATA
transmission to the AP. Second, for effective self-interference
cancellation, the AP needs to nullify the self-interference
caused by the signal that the AP is transmitting. When the
AP starts the downlink DATA transmission, it can accurately
estimate the gain of its own self-interference if there are no
other signals. With this estimate, it begins the self-interference
cancellation, and the self-interference is then canceled out and
stabilized at the noise level. This approach, which makes the AP
transmit before receiving, can cancel the self-interference more
effectively than in the opposite case [16]. When the length of
DATA frames for the uplink and downlink transmissions is the
same, two transmissions cannot be simultaneously terminated
owing to the delayed uplink transmission. Even though the
uplink transmission is delayed for the transmission time of the
HC frame, the delay is around 2 μs when the data transmission
rate is 54 Mbps; because it is shorter than a short inter-frame
space (SIFS) time, collisions due to the transmission of the AD
frame do not occur.
IV. P ERFORMANCE E VALUATION
We performed an SINR analysis of the uplink and downlink
transmissions and extensive simulations for the performance
evaluation of the network throughput and fairness among
clients. Further, we compared the performance of PoCMAC
with that of the CSMA/CA-based half-duplex scheme and the
full-duplex scheme without power control. In addition, we
conducted software defined radio (SDR)-based experiments
to evaluate the performance of the proposed transmit power
adjustment scheme described in Section III-C in an office
environment.
A. SINR of Uplink and Downlink Transmissions
To analyze the effect of inter-client interference between the
TX and the RX, we perform a simulation for the SINR of the
uplink and downlink transmissions in the AP with respect to
the distance between the TX and the RX. As shown in Fig. 8,
we configure the scenario for this simulation as follows. The
positions of the AP and TX are fixed, and the TX and RX
are located at a distance of 100 m from the AP. Only the
RX moves to the opposite side of the TX along a semicircle-
shaped trajectory. Thus, the TX and RX are at the same distance
from the AP, and only the angle between the TX and the RX
changes. With this topology, it is not necessary to select the RX
because there are only one TX and one RX, and thus, the RSSB
contention mechanism is disabled.
CHOI et al.: POWER-CONTROLLED MEDIUM ACCESS CONTROL PROTOCOL FOR FULL-DUPLEX WiFi NETWORKS
Fig. 8. Network scenario for varying distances between the TX and the RX.
Fig. 9. SINRUplink and SINRDownlink with respect to the distance between
the TX and the RX when the suppression level of self-interference cancellation
is 70 dB.
Fig. 9 shows SINRUplink and SINRDownlink with respect to
the distance between the TX and the RX when the suppression
level of self-interference cancellation is 70 dB. In the case
of full-duplex without power control, SINRUplink does not
change as the distance between the TX and the RX increases,
because it is not affected by the position of the RX. In contrast,
SINRDownlink increases as the distance between the TX and the
RX increases. However, when an SINR threshold is required
to successfully receive the DATA transmission (e.g., we use
an SINR threshold of around 6 dB in the simulations for the
throughput performance), the RX cannot receive the downlink
transmission owing to the low SINRDownlink in almost all po-
sitions. Thus, full-duplex without power control cannot utilize
full-duplex capability in this case.
However, PoCMAC can overcome this problem in the same
situation. As shown in Fig. 9, the SINRUplink and SINRDownlink
of PoCMAC increase and then converge as the distance be-
tween the TX and the RX increases. Except when the distance
between the TX and the RX is very small, both the SINRs
of PoCMAC are higher than the SINR threshold. When the
distance between the TX and the RX is small, the inter-client
interference caused by the TX significantly reduces the SINR
at the RX, and the SINRUplink and SINRDownlink of PoCMAC
then have low values. However, if the SINRDownlink at the RX
is lower than the SINR threshold, the RX cannot receive the
DATA transmission from the AP owing to inter-client inter-
ference. In this case, PoCMAC operates through half-duplex
3609
Fig. 10. SINRUplink and SINRDownlink with respect to the suppression level
of self-interference cancellation when the angle between the TX and the RX
is 90◦ .
communication after receiving the CTS-D frame. Then, the
SINRUplink obtained is equal to that of full-duplex without
power control during the period.
We also perform another set of simulations to evaluate the
SINRs of the uplink and downlink transmissions in the AP with
respect to the suppression level α used for self-interference
cancellation in the AP. To analyze the SINRs caused by the
change in α, we use the same topology as that shown in Fig. 8
and set the angle between the TX and the RX to 90◦ . Fig. 10
shows SINRUplink and SINRDownlink with respect to α in the
AP. The SINRUplink and SINRDownlink of PoCMAC increase
linearly as α increases. Because the SINR threshold is 6 dB,
simultaneous uplink and downlink transmissions are possible
when α exceeds around 60 dB. However, when α is lower than
60 dB, the AP under PoCMAC cannot sufficiently suppress the
self-interference caused by the signal that it is transmitting to
the RX, and the SINR performance is then degraded.
On the other hand, in the case of full-duplex without power
control, SINRDownlink does not change, while SINRUplink
gradually increases as α increases. Thus, because the high
α enables the AP to suppress the self-interference caused by
the signal that it is transmitting to the RX, SINRUplink can
be increased. However, even if the self-interference is almost
completely suppressed by the high α, it cannot increase the
SINRDownlink without power control. Because the SINR thresh-
old is 6 dB, the AP cannot perform full-duplex communication
for all values of α with this topology.
B. Simulation for Average Throughput
We carry out extensive simulations to evaluate the throughput
performance of PoCMAC using MATLAB. For our simula-
tions, we consider a single-cell system with an AP having full-
duplex capability and its associated clients with backlogged
user datagram protocol (UDP) packets. We use a disk region
with a radius of 100 m, where the AP is located at the center of
the region, and all clients are randomly distributed within the
region. The transmission rates are set to 6 Mbps for the control
frames and 54 Mbps for the DATA frames, and the overhead
3610 IEEE TRANSACTIONS ON WIRELESS COMMUNICATIONS, VOL. 14, NO. 7, JULY 2015

TABLE I
PARAMETERS U SED FOR P ERFORMANCE E VALUATION

for each control frame is less than the DIFS duration. Each
TX attempts to transmit as many UDP packets as possible. The Fig. 11. Average throughput with respect to the suppression level of self-
interference cancellation when the number of clients is 10.
reported values for the simulation results represent the average
of 1,000 transmission sessions. We compare the throughput
performance of PoCMAC with that of full-duplex without a
power control scheme and that of the CSMA/CA-based half-
duplex scheme, which allows only a single transmission at
a time. In contrast to Section IV-A, because a number of
clients that can be considered as the RX are distributed in
the region, we can confirm the effect of receiver selection by
the RSSB contention mechanism on throughput performance
improvement. The parameter values used in the simulations are
listed in Table I.
Fig. 11 shows the average throughput with respect to α in the
AP. In the half-duplex case with CSMA/CA, there is no change
in the throughput performance because it is not affected by the
suppression level of self-interference cancellation. On the other
hand, PoCMAC achieves a higher throughput performance than
the other schemes over the entire range of α, and the throughput
is saturated after α is greater than 65 dB. When α is greater
Fig. 12. Average throughput with respect to the number of clients when the
than 65 dB, the throughput performance levels off because the suppression level of self-interference cancellation is 60 dB.
AP already uses its maximum transmit power and the self-
interference is sufficiently suppressed with the high value of
α. The transmit power is already saturated with its maximum Fig. 12 shows the average throughput with respect to the
value, and the throughput performance cannot be further im- number of clients when α is fixed at 60 dB. It can be seen that
proved. PoCMAC without the RSSB contention mechanism the average throughput of all the schemes increases until the
shows a lower throughput performance than that with the RSSB number of clients becomes 15. When the number of clients is
contention mechanism. This implies that the RSSB contention greater than 15, the throughput performance of all the schemes
mechanism contributes to the improvement in the throughput is degraded because the frequency of collisions involving RTS
performance. frames increases as the number of clients increases. Even
However, full-duplex without power control does not lead to though the average throughput performance is degraded owing
a significant performance improvement as compared to the per- to the number of clients, PoCMAC exhibits the best perfor-
formance of the CSMA/CA-based half-duplex scheme. In this mance over the entire range.
case, even if α increases, the SINR of the downlink transmis-
sion at the RX does not change, as explained in Section IV-A,
C. Simulation for Fairness
while the SINR of the uplink transmission from the TX in-
creases. Note that without proper power control, the SINR at We carry out simulations to verify the fairness performance
the RX cannot be adjusted to be higher for successful packet of PoCMAC. In the simulations, we use the same simulation
transmissions in these simulations. The simulation results indi- setup and parameters as described in Section IV-B and Table I,
cate that PoCMAC can improve the throughput performance respectively, and we use Jain’s fairness index [17] to evaluate
by around 180% as compared to the CSMA/CA-based half- the fairness in throughput among clients. Fig. 13 shows the
duplex scheme, and by around 145% as compared to full- throughput fairness with respect to α when the number of
duplex without power control. clients is 30. It is observed that PoCMAC achieves the highest
CHOI et al.: POWER-CONTROLLED MEDIUM ACCESS CONTROL PROTOCOL FOR FULL-DUPLEX WiFi NETWORKS
Fig. 13. Fairness index with respect to the suppression level of self-
interference cancellation when the number of clients is 30.
Fig. 14. Fairness index with respect to the number of clients when the
suppression level of self-interference cancellation is 60 dB.
fairness index among all the schemes in our tests. With
PoCMAC, the fairness index is higher than 0.97, which implies
that the clients have almost the same transmission opportunity
on a long-term basis. It is also observed that the value of α
does not affect the fairness performance. It is worth noting that
PoCMAC does not provide only clients near the AP with more
opportunities, because the RX will be determined by the signal
strengths from the TX as well as that from the AP. As a result,
the clients can get almost the same opportunity to transmit, thus
enhancing the fairness performance, as shown in Fig. 13.
In addition, Fig. 14 shows the throughput fairness with
respect to the number of clients when α is 60 dB. As the
number of clients increases, the average inter-client interference
between clients increases because the distance between clients
becomes shorter. Hence, the fairness index for all the schemes
is degraded as the number of clients increases. However,
PoCMAC achieves a better fairness performance in through-
put among clients than the other schemes, because the RSSB
contention mechanism can select the RX with low inter-client
interference even in high inter-client interference situations.
3611
Fig. 15. Placement map of the AP, TX, and RX (A, B, C, and D) for
experiment setup.
D. Experimental Evaluation of Power Control
To experimentally evaluate the impact of power control
by PoCMAC, we implemented a power control scheme for
PoCMAC on the Wireless Open Access Research Platform
(WARP) [18]. We conducted experiments on a WARPnet exper-
iment framework using WARP v3 hardware. The WARPnet
experiment framework supports real-time experiments and
allows the physical layer processing and hardware control to
be executed by the WARP hardware. All the WARP hardware
devices are connected to a host PC via Ethernet, and the host
PC can control the operation of the WARP hardware. We use
a carrier frequency of 2.4 GHz and an OFDM physical layer
with QPSK modulation. The initial transmit power and the
maximum transmit power are set to 0 dBm and 5 dBm, re-
spectively. Based on the specifications of the WARP hardware,
the minimum transmit power is limited to −12 dBm and the
transmit power is adjustable in increments of 1 dBm. The main
objective of the experiment is to verify the SINR performance
of the uplink and downlink transmissions by the transmit power
adjustment scheme, as described in Section IV-A.
To measure the channel information and SINR of the uplink
and downlink transmissions, we set up the WARP hardware as
shown in Fig. 15. As described in Section IV-A, the positions
of the AP and TX are fixed, and only the RX moves from A
to D. The TX and RX are located on the floor, and the AP is
located at a height of 4.1 m from the floor. While the TX sends a
signal for uplink transmission to the AP, the AP simultaneously
sends a signal for downlink transmission to the RX. At each RX
position, the AP measures the SINR of the uplink transmission
sent by the TX, and the RX measures the SINR of the downlink
transmission sent by the AP.
Table II lists the experiment results obtained with and
without the power control scheme of PoCMAC. For full-
duplex without power control, there is no significant change in
SINRUplink for the different RX positions because the positions
of the AP and TX are fixed. However, SINRDownlink decreases
significantly as the RX approaches the TX, because the signal
sent by the TX increasingly interferes with the reception of the
downlink transmission in the RX. Therefore, because the SINR
3612 IEEE TRANSACTIONS ON WIRELESS COMMUNICATIONS, VOL. 14, NO. 7, JULY 2015

TABLE II
E XPERIMENT R ESULTS

threshold for successful reception is 6 dB, full-duplex commu-

nication is not possible at any of the RX positions. The power
control scheme of PoCMAC, as described in Section III-C,
can overcome this problem. When the RX is located at B, C,
and D, the inter-client interference caused by the TX is reduced
by adjusting the transmit powers, and as a result, SINRDownlink
increases significantly. In addition, full-duplex communication
is possible when the position of the RX is B, C, and D because
the SINR threshold is 6 dB. When the RX is located at A, even
if the AP uses the maximum transmit power of 5 dBm and the
TX uses the minimum power of −12 dBm, it cannot overcome
the high inter-client interference caused by the TX owing to the
short distance between the TX and the RX.
We conducted another set of experiments with a random
topology in which the TX and RX are located in 30 random
positions. For each pair of TX and RX positions, we measured
the SINR and evaluated whether full-duplex communication
is possible using PoCMAC. Fig. 16(a) shows the changes in
the received powers for the uplink and downlink transmis-
sions when the power control scheme of PoCMAC is applied.
Under the power control scheme of PoCMAC, full-duplex
communication is possible at 20 positions (depicted as red
circles) out of the 30 positions, while it is possible only at
8 positions (blue squares) without power control. This is be-
cause the power control scheme of PoCMAC reduces the inter-
client interference caused by the TX, as shown in Fig. 16(a).
Note that the gray level of arrows indicates the amount of
change in inter-client interference due to the power control
scheme of PoCMAC. As shown in Fig. 16(b), the power control
scheme of PoCMAC can reduce the inter-client interference by
around 10 dB, on average. The experimental results indicate
that the power control scheme expands the geographical region
where full-duplex communication can be achieved. Fig. 16. Experiment results for evaluating full-duplex capability with PoC-
MAC when the RX is located in 30 random positions. (a) Changes of received
powers for uplink and downlink transmissions by PoCMAC. (b) CDF of inter-
V. C ONCLUSION client interference.

We proposed a full-duplex MAC protocol to provide greater
reception opportunities to clients with low interference and to
reduce the interference between uplink and downlink transmis-
sions at the AP. For a given uplink transmission from a client
to the AP, a client that can achieve high SINR in spite of the
simultaneous uplink transmission may have a greater chance
of being selected as the downlink client under the proposed
RSSB contention mechanism. To maximize the uplink and
downlink SINRs, an optimization problem was formulated,
the optimal solution of which determines the transmit power
of the AP and the uplink client. We defined control frames
and header structures to implement our protocol, PoCMAC.
The performance of PoCMAC was evaluated under various
simulation configurations with regard to the SINR, throughput,
and fairness. In addition, SDR-based experiments with WARP
were performed in a real wireless communication environment.
The simulation and experiment results confirmed the excellent
performance of PoCMAC.
CHOI et al.: POWER-CONTROLLED MEDIUM ACCESS CONTROL PROTOCOL FOR FULL-DUPLEX WiFi NETWORKS 3613

R EFERENCES Wooyeol Choi received the B.S. degree from

the School of Computer Science and Engineering,
[1] J. Choi, M. Jain, K. Srinivasan, P. Levis, and S. Katti, “Achieving single
Pusan National University, Busan, Korea, in 2008,
channel, full duplex wireless communication,” in Proc. ACM Int. Conf.
and the M.S. degree from the School of Infor-
MobiCom Netw., 2010, pp. 1–12.
mation and Communications, Gwangju Institute of
[2] M. Jain et al., “Practical, real-time, full duplex wireless,” in Proc. ACM
Science and Technology (GIST), Gwangju, Korea, in
Int. Conf. MobiCom Netw., 2011, pp. 301–312.
2010. He is currently pursuing the Ph.D. degree at the
[3] A. Sahai, G. Patel, and A. Sabharwal, “Pushing the limits of full-duplex: School of Information and Communications, GIST.
Design and real-time implementation,” Rice Univ., Houston, TX, USA,
His research interests include design, optimization
Rice Univ. Tech. Rep. TREE1104, 2011.
and analysis for wireless networks.
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[7] D. Bharadia, E. McMilin, and S. Katti, “Full duplex radios,” in Proc. ACM Hyuk Lim (M’03) received the B.S., M.S., and
SIGCOMM, 2013, pp. 375–386. Ph.D. degrees from the School of Electrical En-
[8] S. Sen, R. Roy Choudhury, and S. Nelakuditi, “CSMA/CN: Carrier sense gineering and Computer Science, Seoul National
multiple access with collision notification,” in Proc. ACM Int. Conf. University (SNU), Seoul, Korea in 1996, 1998, and
MobiCom Netw., 2010, pp. 25–36. 2003, respectively. He is currently an Associate Pro-
[9] K. Tamaki et al., “Full duplex media access control for wireless multi-hop fessor in the School of Information and Communica-
networks,” in Proc. IEEE VTC—Spring, 2013, pp. 1–5. tions, Gwangju Institute of Science and Technology
[10] W. Zhou, K. Srinivasan, and P. Sinha, “RCTC: Rapid concurrent transmis- (GIST), Gwangju, Korea. He was a Postdoctoral
sion coordination in full duplex wireless networks,” in Proc. IEEE ICNP, Research Associate in the Department of Computer
2013, pp. 1–10. Science, University of Illinois at Urbana Champaign
[11] W. Cheng, X. Zhang, and H. Zhang, “Optimal dynamic power control for in 2003–2006. His research interests include the net-
full-duplex bidirectional-channel based wireless networks,” in Proc. IEEE work protocol design, analysis, and empirical evaluation of wireless networks.
INFOCOM, 2013, pp. 3120–3128.
[12] S. Goyal, P. Liu, O. Gurbuz, E. Erkip, and S. Panwar, “A distributed MAC
protocol for full duplex radio,” in Proc. Asilomar Conf. Signals, Syst.
Comput., 2013, pp. 788–792.
[13] D. Ramirez and B. Aazhang, “Optimal routing and power allocation for
wireless networks with imperfect full-duplex nodes,” IEEE Trans. Wire-
less Commun., vol. 12, no. 9, pp. 4692–4704, Sep. 2013.
[14] N. Singh et al., “Efficient and fair MAC for wireless networks with self-
interference cancellation,” in Proc. IEEE Int. Symp. Modeling WiOpt Ashutosh Sabharwal (S’91–M’99–SM’04–F’14)
Mobile, Ad Hoc Netw., 2011, pp. 94–101. received the B.Tech. degree from the Indian Institute
[15] J. Bai and A. Sabharwal, “Distributed full-duplex via wireless side- of Technology Delhi, New Delhi, India, in 1993
channels: Bounds and protocols,” IEEE Trans. Wireless Commun., vol. 12, and the M.S. and Ph.D. degrees from The Ohio
no. 8, pp. 4162–4173, Aug. 2013. State University, Columbus, OH, USA, in 1995 and
[16] A. Sahai, G. Patel, and A. Sabharwal, “Asynchronous full-duplex wire- 1999, respectively. He is currently a Professor with
less,” in Proc. Int. Conf. COMSNETS, 2012, pp. 1–9. the Department of Electrical and Computer Engi-
[17] R. Jain, D. Chiu, and W. Hawe, “A quantitative measure of fairness and neering, Rice University, Houston, TX, USA. He
discrimination for resource allocation in shared computer system,” Digital is the Founder of the WARP Project. His research
Equip. Corp., Hudson, MA, USA, DEC Tech. Rep. 301, 1984. interests include information theory, communication
[18] Wireless Open Access Research Platform (WARP) Project, Rice Univer- algorithms, and experiment-driven design of wireless
sity, Houston, TX, USA. [Online]. Available: http://warpproject.org/ networks. He received the 1998 Presidential Dissertation Fellowship Award.