Reconsideration of carrier sensing range for wireless ad hoc networks

Abstract

Recent experimental results have shown that the minimum signal-to-interference ratio required at a receiver (CPth) depends on the order of arrivals of overlapping frames, and it is much less when the sender's frame arrives earlier. With such differentiating capture capable receivers, in this paper we reconsider the optimal choice for carrier sense range rs of wireless nodes. Through simple analysis and simulations we show that rs need not be more than (CPth)^1/α rt, where α is the wireless path loss factor and rt is the nodal communication range.