Hi,
I updated the CSMA_MAC PR [1]. Some concepts have slightly changed; e.g.
the CCA is now assumed to be suppored in HW, before TX. I tested this
version with the Phytec board, by enabling TESTING_FUNCTIONS in the file
ng_csma_mac.c. This function simply sets LEDs to observe the TX time of
the nodes. I observed for the occurance of overlapping TX time of two
nodes, which wasn´t the case when I used the CSMA/CA mechanism. However,
this again is only a WIP PR for further discussion.
There popped up some questions about the interaction with a radio driver:
1. Both, the upper layer and the current implementations of the
ng_netdev radio drivers use task messages to signalize an event (Packet
to be sent or Packet to receive waiting). Both message mechanisms send
their messages to the mac_pid and therefore use the same message queue.
If the mac-layer and the transceiver is busy with sending a message out
or waiting for an ACK it might wait for a signal from the driver
(RX-ready, ACK-received...). In the same time there might also be
messages from the upper layers that can not be handled until the
previous packet is sent out.
- I handled this problem in using the drivers call-back function in
combination with different task lock mechanisms for upper layer
(msg_receive) and for driver events 2x(mutex_lock), which causes in
TASK_BLOCKED state. That method worked very well, even if I fired the
mac-layer continously with upper layer messages.
2. The drivers send function builds the IEEE 802.15.4 MAC header on its
own. The alternative would be to let the MAC layer do this job. This
would avoid code duplication and make it easier to implement new radio
drivers. Is there any reason to do this in the driver implementation?
3. Introduction of PHY dependant constants: The constants (e.g.
SYMBOL_LENGTH used in backoff intervall, MAX_BE, MIN_BE,
TURNAROUND_TIME, MAC_ACK_WAIT_DURATION, MAX_RETRIES..). As these
constants are different for each type of PHY (2,5 Ghz, subGhz and also
Modulation specific) we could put them in a struct that would be linked
to the device descriptor.
4. Generally, a successfull TX of a packet is not signalized to upper
layers. But how do we handle a packet that could not be sent to the
channel (e.g. channel busy)? Should upper layer be informed about the
failure?
A WIP state of the ng_kw2xrf-driver that I used for testing can be found
in my repo [2].
a nice Weekend,
Jonas
[1] - https://github.com/RIOT-OS/RIOT/pull/2467
[2] - https://github.com/jremmert-phytec-iot/RIOT/tree/wip%40kw2xrf_ng
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