Experimental approach to adaptive carrier sensing in IEEE 802.15.4 wireless networks

ABSTRACT

In carrier sense multiple access with collision avoidance (CSMA/CA) wireless networks, adaptive physical carrier sense (CS) mechanisms have been proposed to maximize spatial reuse and to mitigate packet collisions in various wireless networking environments. Most of them attempt to reduce the carrier sensing range for higher throughput performance as long as the signal-to-interference-plus-noise-ratio (SINR) requirement is satisfied at the receiver. In this paper, we implement one of adaptive CS mechanisms in IEEE 802.15.4 wireless networks and show that the adaptation leads to significant throughput unfairness among wireless nodes. We propose an adaptive CS mechanism for fairness and empirically show that the proposed mechanism improves both the throughputand fairness performance in CSMA/CA wireless networks.

REFERENCES

• 1: H. Ma et al. Optimizing throughput with carrier sensing adaptation for IEEE 802.11. IEEE ICC, 2007.
• 2: Jing Zhu , Xingang Guo , L. Lily Yang , W. Steven Conner , Sumit Roy , Mousumi M. Hazra, Adapting physical carrier sensing to maximize spatial reuse in 802.11 mesh networks: Research Articles, Wireless Communications & Mobile Computing, v.4 n.8, p.933-946, December 2004 [doi>10.1002/wcm.v4:8]
• 3: J. Zhu et al. Adaptive CSMA for scalable network capacity in high-density WLAN: A hardware prototyping approach. IEEE INFOCOM, 2006.

INDEX TERMS

Primary Classification:
  C. Computer Systems Organization
  C.2 COMPUTER-COMMUNICATION NETWORKS
      C.2.1 Network Architecture and Design
          Subjects: Wireless communication

Additional Classification:
  C. Computer Systems Organization
  C.2 COMPUTER-COMMUNICATION NETWORKS
      C.2.0 General
          Subjects: Data communications
      C.2.5 Local and Wide-Area Networks

General Terms:
Design, Experimentation, Measurement, Performance

Keywords:
IEEE 802.15.4, adaptation, carrier sense, fairness