Reconsideration of carrier sensing range for wireless ad hoc networks

Recent experimental results have shown that the minimum signal-to-interference ratio required at a receiver (CP_th) depends on the order of arrivals of overlapping frames, and it is much less when the sender´s frame arrives earlier. With such differentiating capture capable receivers, in this paper we reconsider the optimal choice for carrier sense range r_s of wireless nodes. Through simple analysis and simulations we show that r_s need not be more than (CP_th)^1/¿r_t, where ¿ is the wireless path loss factor and r_t is the nodal communication range.