New Adaptive RTS/CTS Control Method for Reduced Transmission Overhead on Networks with Hidden Terminals

The IEEE802.11 standard uses the RTS/CTS handshake mechanism to avoid packet collisions with transmissions from hidden terminals. Although this mechanism is effective, it increases the transmission overhead. Here, we discuss this transmission overhead induced by RTS/CTS handshaking and propose a new adaptive RTS/CTS control method based on the actual existence of hidden terminals on a network for mitigating the transmission overhead. The results from computer simulations confirm that our proposed method improves throughput performance in a saturated traffic environment.