Hashing backoff: A collision-free wireless access method

Abstract

In this paper, we propose Hashing Backoff, an access method in which stations select backoff values by means of asymptotically orthogonal hashing functions, so that contending stations converge to a collision-free state. This solution is a half-way between TDMA, CDMA, and random access. Our simulations show that it presents significant improvement over Idle Sense, the access method with much better performance that the standard 802.11 DCF. The fact that the proposed method focuses on reducing collisions makes it particularly interesting for some specific applications such as sensor networks in which eliminating collisions leads to energy savings. © IFIP International Federation for Information Processing 2009.