SIMULATIVE STUDY OF THE RTS/CTS SOLUTION TO THE HIDDEN NODE PROBLEM IN INFRASTRUCTURE WIRELESS LANs

摘要

In order to solve the Hidden Node problem in Wireless LAN hot spots, the RTS/CTS mechanism was introduced. It decreases the collision probability, such that a performance gain in terms of user experienced throughput can be reached. On the other hand, it adds overhead to the MAC protocol. It was expected that the gain is larger than the overhead and thus, a performance enhancement is reached. However, earlier studies indicate that the overhead is too large, such that the performance is even more decreased when using the RTS/CTS mechanism in Hidden Node scenarios. In this article we focus on this specific topic and discuss the various parameters that influence the trade-off between additional overhead and performance enhancement.