Power Control MAC Protocol Analysis and Improvement for Ad Hoc Networks

Several MAC layer power control protocols have been proposed to address the limited power supplies in ad hoc networks. Recent protocols suggest varying the transmission power such that the RTS/CTS handshake is done at the maximum, and the Data-ACK are transmitted at the minimum necessary transmission power level. It has also been suggested to periodically use maximum transmission power during Data transmission. However, using the maximum transmission power level in RTS/CTS handshake does not solve the hidden node problem and in fact causes throughput degradation. Also, IEEE 802.11 does not allow the power levels to change in the same transmission. In this paper, we review different power control MAC protocols, and analyze the effect of transmission power levels on the hidden node problem and the throughput. We then propose an efficient low-power MAC protocol that reduces power consumption and improves throughput. We validate our protocol via detailed simulations.

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