The heterogeneous hidden/exposed terminal problem for power-controlled ad hoc MAC protocols and its solutions

The interference and power control issues are among the most important and urgent problems that have to be solved for ad hoc networks to be efficient and widely applicable. We identify a number of unique problems in multihop networks. We then propose the interference-aware multiple access (IAMA) scheme for medium access control (MAC) in ad hoc networks and multihop wireless LANs. Based on detached dialogues, triggered CTS, and the object-to-sending (OTS) mechanisms, IAMA is the first and only distributed MAC scheme reported in the literature thus far that can solve the additive interference problem using the same channel shared by both data packets and their associated control messages. It is also the first distributed MAC scheme that can achieve interference awareness without relying on busy tone or dual transceivers per mobile device. IAMA can also solve the variable-power heterogeneous hidden/exposed terminal problem without relying on any hardware for measuring signal strength, and naturally supports interference engineering and multiple access with directional antennas.