Effective Carrier Sensing in CSMA Networks Under Cumulative Interference

This paper proposes and investigates the concept of a safe carrier-sensing range that can guarantee interference-safe (also termed hidden-node-free) transmissions in CSMA networks under the cumulative interference model. Compared with the safe carrier-sensing range under the commonly assumed but less realistic pairwise interference model, the authors show that the safe carrier-sensing range required under the cumulative interference model is larger by a constant multiplicative factor. For example, if the SINR requirement is 10dB and the path-loss exponent is 4, the factor is 1.4. The concept of a safe carrier-sensing range, although amenable to elegant analytical results, is inherently not compatible with the conventional power-threshold carrier-sensing mechanism (e.g., that used in IEEE 802.11).