A Survey on Synchronization Approach in MAC Layer Protocols

The Open Systems Interconnection (OSI) model describes the layered approach for communication between two networked systems. The Data link layer of OSI model consists of a sub layer known as MAC layer for achieving coordination among the communicating nodes to access the shared channel. This channel is shared between multiple nodes in a communication network and the packets transmitted at same time by different nodes collide with each other. This situation leads to loss of data and bandwidth gets wasted. To avoid this situation, MAC layer supports various protocols: TDMA, ALOHA, CSMA/CD, CSMA/CA and many hybrid techniques which employ their own criteria of synchronization for minimizing the collisions. In this paper the authors discuss about the MAC layer and the multiple access protocols which it supports for achieving synchronization among the nodes in the channel.