  We study mission-critical networking in wireless communication networks,
where network users are subject to critical events such as emergencies and
crises. If a critical event occurs to a user, the user needs to send necessary
information for help as early as possible. However, most existing medium access
control (MAC) protocols are not adequate to meet the urgent need for
information transmission by users in a critical situation. In this paer, we
propose a novel class of MAC protocols that utilize available past information
as well as current information. Our proposed protocols are mission-aware since
they prescribe different transmission decision rules to users in different
situations. We show that the proposed protocols perform well not only when the
system faces a critical situation but also when there is no critical situation.
By utilizing past information, the proposed protocols coordinate transmissions
by users to achieve high throughput in the normal phase of operation and to let
a user in a critical situation make successful transmissions while it is in the
critical situation. Moreover, the proposed protocols require short memory and
no message exchanges.
