The importance of spatial reuse in wireless ad-hoc networks has been long recognized as a key to improving the network capacity. One can increase the level of spatial reuse by either reducing the transmit power or increasing the carrier sense threshold (thereby reducing the carrier sense range). On the other hand, as the transmit power decreases or the carrier sense threshold increases, the SINR decreases as a result of the smaller received signal or the increased interference level. Consequently, the data rate sustained by each transmission may decrease. This leads naturally to the following questions:(1)How can the trade-off between the increased level of spatial reuse and the decreased data rate each node can sustain be quantified? In other words,is there an optimal range of transmit power/carrier sense threshold in which the network capacity is maximized? (2)What is the relation between the transmit power and the carrier sense threshold.In this paper, we study both problems, and show that (i)in the case that the achievable channel rate follows the Shannon capacity, spatial reuse depends only on the ratio of the transmit power to the carrier sense threshold; and (ii) in the case that only a set of discrete data rates are available, tuning the transmit power offers several advantages that tuning the carrier sense threshold cannot, provided that there is a sufficient number of power levels available. Based on the findings, we then propose a decentralized power and rate control algorithm to enable each node to adjust, based on its signal interference level, its transmit power and data rate. The transmit power is so determined that the transmitter can sustain a high data rate, while keeping the adverse interference effect on the other neighboring concurrent transmissions minimal. Simulation results have shown that, as compared to existing carrier sense threshold tuning algorithms, the proposed power and rate control algorithm yields higher network capacity.
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