RTS/CTS-induced congestion in ad hoc wireless LANs

Author

Ray, Saikat ; Carruthers, Jeffrey B. ; Starobinski, David

Author_Institution

Dept. of Electr. & Comput. Eng., Boston Univ., MA, USA

Volume

3

fYear

2003

fDate

20-20 March 2003

Firstpage

1516

Abstract

The RTS/CTS mechanism is widely used in wireless networks in order to avoid packet collisions and, thus, achieve high throughput. In ad hoc networks, however the current implementation of the RTS/CTS mechanism may lead to interdependencies so that nodes become unable to transmit any packets during long periods of time. This effect manifests itself in the form of congestion where, after a certain point, the network throughput decreases with increasing load instead of maintaining its peak value. In this paper, we describe and analyze this problem in detail and provide a backward-compatible solution, called RTS validation. Our simulations show that this solution leads to a 60% gain in the peak throughput in addition to stabilizing the throughput at high load.

Keywords

ad hoc networks; telecommunication congestion control; wireless LAN; RTS validation; RTS/CTS mechanism; ad hoc networks; backward-compatible solution; induced congestion; local area networks; packet collision; peak throughput; throughput stabilization; wireless LAN; Access protocols; Ad hoc networks; Intelligent networks; Local area networks; Media Access Protocol; Multiaccess communication; Throughput; Wireless LAN; Wireless application protocol; Wireless networks;

fLanguage

English

Publisher

ieee

Conference_Titel

Wireless Communications and Networking, 2003. WCNC 2003. 2003 IEEE

Conference_Location

New Orleans, LA, USA

ISSN

1525-3511

Print_ISBN

0-7803-7700-1

Type

conf

DOI

10.1109/WCNC.2003.1200611

Filename

1200611