Comparative Analysis of Terahertz MAC Protocols for Wireless Data Center

Over the last few years, generation of Internet data by the users has drastically increased. As this data is accessed, processed, shared, and delivered through the data centers (DC), therefore bandwidth requirement for DC is increasing. Although, wired technologies are being used, but at the cost of high maintenance, limited flexibility, and high energy consumption. Wireless Terahertz (THz) links can help to overcome these challenges of wired technologies and can also provide high data rates upto Terabits-per-second (Tbps) with low latency due to very high bandwidth availability. However, THz band itself has some challenges including high spreading, molecular, and material penetration losses. In the same way, the challenges for a DC includes its unique environmental and traffic characteristics which are in form of blockages, and different packet sizes (small and long flows) and traffic patterns. With these factors communication in DC can become challenging, so to ensure reliable and efficient communication it is necessary to understand the effect of these factors in the existing THz Medium Access Control (MAC) protocols. In this paper, we compare the existing THz MAC protocols, considering the unique environment and characteristics of DC like blockages and different packet sizes which will provide the basis to design and develop new THz MAC protocols. These protocols are implemented and evaluated on NS-3, and results show that the performance decreases when the unique requirements of THz band and DC environment are considered.