Design and Performance Evaluation of CAM-MAC for Ad Hoc Networks

The vagaries of the wireless channel and its location-dependent nature often prevent wireless networking devices from acquiring sufficient knowledge about channel status in their vicinity. This results in network nodes making uninformed decisions at times and thereby degrades system performance. Specifically in the MAC layer, simultaneous transmissions from non-adjacent nodes can have strong influence on each other (e.g., the hidden terminal problem), but such non-local information is not readily available when a node wishes to establish communication with another. This knowledge deficiency is aggravated by the usage of multiple frequency channels in ad hoc networks.