Investigation of power-aware IEEE 802.11 performance in multi-hop ad hoc networks

Abstract

The choice of transmit power determines the transmission range and carrier sensing range. Thus, the transmit power is a key to the tradeoff between the amount of spatial reuse and probability of collisions in wireless multi-hop ad hoc networks. In this paper, we propose a realistic analytical model to study the performance of the IEEE 802.11 access method in multi-hop wireless networks by incorporating the effect of transmit power and physical carrier sense. Using the model, we investigate the effect of these attributes on the throughput obtained by individual nodes. Our results show that performing power control and carrier sense threshold tuning using the two way handshake offer higher advantages and achieve better throughput than that achieved using the four-way handshake. © Springer-Verlag Berlin Heidelberg 2007.