Impacts of Transmission Range in Homogeneous Wireless Networks

In this paper the issue of transmission range in homogeneous wireless networks (HWNs) is addressed. In such networks, wireless mobile nodes are assumed to use the same transmission ranges. In HWNs, higher transmission ranges reduce the number of hops that packets need to reach their destinations, but they also increase the number of nodes that locally compete for the medium access. On the other hand, shorter transmission ranges allow simultaneous transmissions in different areas of the network. However, for such short transmission ranges the probability of a disconnected network increases. To deal with the fore mentioned dilemma, a new approach based on analytically defining an initial transmission range that keeps the network connected is presented herein. The simulation carried out under various network loads has focused on a set of metrics, namely: packets delivery ratio, average end to end delay and normalized routing overhead. The simulation results have shown that using short transmission range may not lead always to optimal performance.