Joint optimization of carrier sensing threshold and transmission rate in wireless ad hoc networks

The ever-increasing demands of wireless traffic call for continuously growing the wireless network capacity or throughput. Carrier sensing threshold adaptation and transmission rate adaptation, two efficient mechanisms improving the capacity of ad hoc network, have attracted much attention in recent years. However, simply adopting either mechanism can hardly meet the expectation that optimizing the network capacity. In this paper, we investigate the joint optimization of carrier sensing threshold and transmission rate to improve the network capacity or throughput. The area capacity (throughput), which is defined as the network capacity (throughput) per unit area, is theoretically analyzed. Meanwhile, the relationship between carrier sensing threshold and transmission rate is theoretically revealed. Furthermore, the optimal area capacity is obtained by jointly optimizing the carrier sensing threshold and the transmission rate. Simulation results validate our analysis and derived results, and show that the throughput is significantly improved by the joint optimization.