Revisiting distributed transmit power control in ad hoc wireless networks with ODC capability

With a view to conserve energy, a basic power control (BPC) scheme was suggested in distributed control IEEE 802.11 wireless ad hoc networks, where a data frame is sent at the lowest permitted power. Past research showed that BPC works inefficiently in terms of throughput as well as energy consumption. In this paper we revisit the effects of BPC on the network performance with the nodes having frame arrival order dependent signal capture (ODC) capability. We first analyze the reasons for poor performance of basic power control without ODC. We then investigate the effect of ODC on system throughput as well as energy efficiency. Via intuitive arguments and network simulations we demonstrate that, in presence of ODC capability of the receivers, BPC can be highly effective in terms of throughput as well as energy efficiency.