Using Rate Balancing to Improve Throughput in a Wireless Multi-hop Chain Topology

A well-known problem in wireless multi-hop communication is the significant degradation of throughput when the number of hops increases. Previous research shows that in a chain topology, nodes using IEEE 802.11 can at best achieve 1/4, but in practice only 1/7, much smaller than the ideal 1/3 of the throughput of single-hop transmission. In order to improve performance in multi-hop cases, we introduce a rate balance scheme and tune the sensing range at physical layer and contention window at MAC layer. Our simulation results show that the throughput ratio close to 1/4 is achievable when the number of hops is as high as 12; better ratios of 1/3.4 and 1/3.6 are achieved when number of hops is 5 and 8, respectively.