On Avoiding RTS Collisions for IEEE 802.11-BasedWireless Ad Hoc Networks

The paper proposes an RCA MAC protocol to reduce RTS collisions. The protocol utilizes a narrow band, called the tone channel, to announce the RTS transmission in advance to preclude the RTS transmissions of two-hop neighbors. To reduce the channel and hardware overhead, an improvement to the RCA protocol is also devised, which only uses a single channel and one transceiver to reduce RTS collisions. The RCA protocol provides a type of fast collision detection and decreases the probability of RTS collisions. Meanwhile, the RCA protocol can reduce the retransmission cost and has lower control overhead than that of IEEE 802.11 DCF. In addition, simulation results verify the advantages of the RCA protocol in comparison with IEEE 802.11 DCF