Abstract
The hidden terminal problem leads to frequent collisions and decreases the throughput of ad hoc networks dramatically. Low network spatial reuse also results in fewer parallel transmissions, which further leads to reduced network throughput. Eliminating the hidden terminals and improving the spatial reuse are two important approaches to improving network throughput. In this paper, spatial distribution of the hidden terminals is analyzed in consideration of accumulated interference and environmental noise. As the distribution of hidden terminals is affected by many factors such as transmitter-receiver distance, SINR requirement and nodes density, it is inefficient to use fixed busy tone transmission power. To eliminate the hidden terminals and improve network spatial reuse, an enhancement to DBTMA named EDBTMA is proposed. This is achieved by using an adaptive busy tone power control scheme. Receivers adjust the transmission power of busy tone according to received signal power and accumulated interference adaptively so that all hidden terminals (and only hidden terminals) are covered by the busy tone. Simulation results show that EDBTMA protocol can solve the hidden terminal problem and improve network spatial reuse better than DBTMA and achieves 65% additional network throughput compared to DBTMA.
