Millimeter wave (mmW) and Terahertz band (THz) play important roles for future wireless communications to support ultra-high data rates. However, the high propagation loss and inherent directivity features pose critical challenges on the medium access control (MAC) protocol design to fully exploit their potential benefits, including deafness, control channel selection mechanism, line-of-sight (LoS) blockage, mobility management and spatial reuse strategy. To address these challenges, in-depth literature survey is conducted on MAC protocols for the mmW and THz bands wireless networks in this paper. A taxonomy of the MAC protocols based on their network architectures and the channel access mechanisms is presented. Furthermore, emphasizing the benefits and requirements of the MAC design choices, extensive qualitative comparison is described on the advantages and disadvantages among the different directional MAC design choices. Numerical evaluations on delay, network throughput, outage probability, and fairness are detailed to guide the corresponding performance-oriented design selections. Finally, some open problems and possible future directions on the mmW and THz MAC design are respectively elaborated.

毫米波（mmW）和太赫兹频带（THz）对于未来的无线通信以支持超高数据速率起着重要作用。但是，高传播损耗和固有的方向性特征对媒体访问控制（MAC）协议设计提出了严峻挑战，以充分利用其潜在的好处，包括耳聋，控制信道选择机制，视线（LoS）阻塞，移动性管理和空间重用策略。为了应对这些挑战，本文针对mmW和THz频段无线网络的MAC协议进行了深入的文献调查。介绍了基于MAC协议的网络体系结构和信道访问机制的分类法。此外，强调MAC设计选择的好处和要求，针对不同方向MAC设计选择之间的优缺点，进行了广泛的定性比较。详细介绍了有关延迟，网络吞吐量，中断概率和公平性的数值评估，以指导相应的面向性能的设计选择。最后，分别阐述了毫米波和太赫兹MAC设计中的一些未解决的问题和可能的未来方向。