Efficient Synchronous MAC Protocols for Terahertz Networking in Wireless Data Center

Terahertz communication is emerging as a potential technology to support thousands of Gbps throughput and ultra low delay. Therefore, it is regarded as a future technology for data center networking. However, the unique characteristics of Terahertz bands make it extremely challenging to design efficient Medium Access Control (MAC) protocols for Terahertz wireless data centers. Specifically, the problems of low channel utilization and lack of quality of service support in Terahertz networking should be well investigated. In this paper, we propose a centralized Terahertz networking architecture for wireless data center with two efficient synchronous MAC protocols. To solve the problem of low channel utilization caused by the involvement of directional antennas, we design an efficient High Channel Utilization MAC protocol called HCU-MAC based on “CSMA+TDMA” techniques and a novel two-way handshake procedure. To support Quality of Services (QoS) for Terahertz networking, we propose a TDMA-based one-way handshake MAC protocol called HTS-MAC. The proposed MAC protocols are implemented and evaluated in NS-3. Simulation result reveals that our proposed MAC protocols achieve high channel utilization and data transmission success rate, which outperforms the state-of-the-art Terahertz MAC protocol and provides a valuable design reference for future Terahertz wireless data center.