A power controlled multiple access protocol for wireless packet networks

Multiple access-based collision avoidance MAC protocols have typically used fixed transmission power, and have not considered power control mechanisms based on the distance of the transmitter and receiver in order to improve spatial channel reuse. This work proposes PCMA, a power controlled multiple access wireless MAC protocol within the collision avoidance framework. PCMA generalizes the transmit-or-defer "on/off" collision avoidance model of current protocols to a more flexible "variable bounded power" collision suppression model. The algorithm is provisioned for ad hoc networks and does not require the presence of base stations to manage transmission power (i.e. it is decentralized). The advantage of implementing a power controlled protocol in an ad-hoc network is that source-destination pairs can be more tightly packed into the network allowing a greater number of simultaneous transmissions (spectral reuse). Our initial simulation results show that the PCMA can improve the throughput performance of the non-power controlled IEEE 802.11 by a factor of 2 with potential for additional scalability as source-destination pairs become more localized, thus providing a compelling reason for migrating to a new power controlled multiple access wireless MAC protocol standard.