Medium access control via contention-based distributed power control

A successful distributed power control algorithm requires only local measurements for updating the power level of a transmitting node, so that eventually all transmitters meet their QoS requirements. Nevertheless, the problem arises when the QoS requirements cannot be achieved for all the users in the network. In this paper, a distributed algorithm for wireless ad hoc networks which is contention-based and makes use of a back off mechanism is proposed. This algorithm aims to eliminate overhead communication, improve fairness, allow nodes to operate asynchronously while establishing some performance level. The performance of the algorithm is evaluated via simulations.