A SINR-based transmission power control for MAC protocol in wireless ad hoc networks

This paper proposes a power control MAC protocol that allows the nodes to vary transmission power. By using the minimum required transmission power, our proposed protocol can improve the spatial reuse and energy saving. The main idea is to adopt IEEE 802.11 Power Saving Mechanism (PSM) and the appropriate power control scheme for the wireless ad hoc networks. All control messages are transmitted at the maximum transmission power in the ATIM window, while data packets are sent at the minimum required transmission power in the data window. Based on the receiving power and the transmission power information of the control messages from the neighboring nodes, a node checks whether it can transmit simultaneously while it guarantees the interference level at its neighboring nodes. Simulation results show that the proposed protocol outperforms the IEEE 802.11 in terms of aggregate throughput, average delay and energy efficiency.