Quantitative analysis of the hidden terminal problem in preamble sampling WSNs

Collisions in preamble sampling WSNs cause a high waste of resources due to the mandatory transmission of a long preamble before every message. Moreover, when hidden terminals are present, collisions are even more noticeable since the vulnerability time is proportional to the long preamble duration. This effect reduces considerably the network performance as both the number of collisions and the resources spent in them are significant. The effects of hidden nodes in preamble sampling WSNs, in different case scenarios and under variable offered loads, are analyzed in this work. Results show that the impact of hidden terminals in the network performance is non-negligible, specially at medium to high loads. These results should be considered by MAC protocol designers in order to devise mechanisms to mitigate the hidden terminal problem.