Title: A unified interference/collision model for optimal MAC transmission power in ad hoc networks

Authors: Sameh Gobriel, Rami Melhem, Daniel Mosse

Addresses: Department of Computer Science, University of Pittsburgh, Pittsburgh, PA 15260, USA. ' Department of Computer Science, University of Pittsburgh, Pittsburgh, PA 15260, USA. ' Department of Computer Science, University of Pittsburgh, Pittsburgh, PA 15260, USA

Abstract: In this paper we address the issue of controlling transmission power in power-aware ad hoc networks. We argue that minimum transmission power is not always optimal. Previous work that minimises the transmission power does not consider both the energy consumed in collision resolution and the energy disbursed to overcome the interference resulting from neighbouring nodes. We investigate the basic transmission power control for the 802.11 MAC protocol, in which the control frames and the data frames can be transmitted at different power levels. A unified collision and interference model of a uniformly distributed network is constructed. Based on this model, the end-to-end network throughput and the total energy consumption of the network are examined for different network parameters. For a network with a given node density, our results show the optimal transmission power for control messages and for data messages that will yield maximum throughput and minimum energy consumption per message.

Keywords: collision model; interference model; ad hoc networks; energy efficiency; wireless networks; transmission power; IEEE 802.11 MAC protocols; energy consumption; control messages; data messages; medium access control.

DOI: 10.1504/IJWMC.2006.012554

International Journal of Wireless and Mobile Computing, 2006 Vol.1 No.3/4, pp.179 - 190

Published online: 22 Feb 2007 *

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