In this paper, we propose a method for sharing the handshakes of control packets among multiple nodes, which we call a hybrid sender- and receiver-initiated (HSR) protocol scheme. Handshake-sharing can be achieved by inviting neighbors to join the current handshake and by allowing them to send their data packets without requiring extra handshakes. Thus, HSR can reduce the signaling overhead involved in control packet exchanges during handshakes, as well as resolve the spatial unfairness problem between nodes. From an operational perspective, HSR resembles the well-known handshake-sharing scheme referred to as the medium access control (MAC) protocol using reverse opportunistic packet appending (ROPA). However, in ROPA the waiting time is not controllable for the receiver's neighbors and thus unexpected collisions may occur at the receiver due to hidden neighbors, whereas the proposed scheme allows all nodes to avoid hidden-node-induced collisions according to an elaborately calculated waiting time. Our computer simulations demonstrated that HSR outperforms ROPA with respect to both the throughput and delay by around 9.65% and 11.36%, respectively.
Keywords: handshake-based MAC protocol; handshake-sharing; hidden-node problem; long propagation delay; receiver-initiated protocol; sender-initiated protocol; sensor networks; spatial unfairness problem; underwater acoustics.