A single-channel solution for transmission power control in wireless ad hoc networks

Transmission power control (TPC) has a great potential to increase the throughput of a mobile ad hoc network (MANET). Existing TPC schemes achieve this goal by using additional hardware (e.g., multiple transceivers), by compromising the collision avoidance property of the channel access scheme, or by imposing impractical requirements on the operation of the MAC protocol. In this paper, we present a novel power control MAC protocol, known as POWMAC, for MANETs that enjoys the same simple single-channel, single-transceiver design of the IEEE 802.11 ad hoc MAC protocol, but that achieves a significant throughput improvement over the 802.11 scheme. Collision avoidance is integrated into the design of POWMAC. Instead of alternating between the transmission of control (RTS/CTS) and data packets, as done in the 802.11 scheme, POWMAC uses an access window (AW) to allow for a series of RTS/CTS exchanges to take place before multiple, concurrent data packet transmissions can commence. The lengt...

• Type: Conference
• Year: 2004
• Where: MOBIHOC
• Authors: Alaa Muqattash, Marwan Krunz
• Keywords: Collision Avoidance, Collision Avoidance Property, Hoc Mac Protocol, MOBIHOC 2004, Wireless Networks