Modelling collision alleviating DCF protocol with finite retry limits

IEEE 802.11-based wireless ad hoc networks are well suited for critical scenarios such as rescue operations during natural calamities, military applications on battle fields and so on where the existing infrastructure fails. In these networks, since nodes have limited battery power, the reduction in packet collision is very important, otherwise the nodes have to spend more energy for packet transmission. In these wireless networks, the packet transmission procedure plays a pivotal role in performance. Several packet transmission procedures represented with Markov chain models have been suggested by the authors to improve the network performance. However, these procedures have not been suitable for dense networks due to the high collision rate. A new packet transmission procedure for the IEEE 802.11 distributed coordination function (DCF) protocol is proposed to reduce the number of collisions and enhance the throughput of wireless networks. A mathematical framework is carried out for transmission probability and performance analysis is presented showing that the new procedure greatly enhances the network performance and as a result can be applied in the design and performance optimisation of wireless network protocols.