Tuning the carrier sensing range of IEEE 802.11 MAC

We investigate the effects of the carrier sensing range of the IEEE 802.11 Multiple Access Control (MAC) scheme in this paper. Contrary to a simple and inaccurate cut-off circular collision model that is commonly used, we employ a more accurate collision model to realistically simulate MAC schemes in ad hoc networks. We argue that the carrier sensing range is a tunable parameter that can significantly affect the MAC performance in multihop ad hoc networks. An optimal carrier sensing range should balance the trade-off between the amount of spatial frequency reuse and the possibility of packet collisions. A reward formulation for the optimization of the carrier sensing range is presented. Extensive simulation results are provided to substantiate our study.