Performance evaluation of an opportunistic distributed power control procedure for wireless multiple access

In wireless ad hoc networks, effective spatial channel reuse can maximize the achievable throughput. To this aim, power-controlled multiple access MAC protocols seems to be a viable solution to allow a greater number of simultaneous transmissions on the same channel. In this paper, we propose an opportunistic distributed algorithm to increase throughput in ad-hoc networks by exploiting the spatial reuse deriving from the implementation of power controlled data transmissions. Performance is evaluated through simulation. Results show that a marked improvement of the aggregate channel utilization can be achieved with respect to the no power control schemes (such as in the typical IEEE 802.11 systems) by properly selecting the link margins for fading and interference.