Effect of carrier sensing range in a network architecture with a multi-sector antenna access point and omni-directional mobile nodes

We propose a network architecture with a multi-sector antenna based access point (AP) and omni-directional antenna based mobile nodes (MNs) in order to mitigate a hot spot problem in a single cell environment. In order to investigate the effect of carrier sensing range on the system performance we compare the performance of the proposed network architecture with that of an omni-directional antenna based AP/MNs network architecture in terms of throughput, probability of collision, power consumption, and power consumption per throughput for varying the carrier sensing range. As the carrier sensing range increases, the occurrence of fewer hidden nodes improves the overall network performance in the conventional omni-directional AP/MNs network architecture. On the other hand, in the proposed network architecture, the occurrence of more hidden nodes increases the possibility of multiple concurrent transmissions. Therefore, the performance of the proposed network architecture is generally improved, as the carrier sensing range decreases. The proposed network architecture with a proper carrier sensing range yields a significant improvement in system capacity and power saving in comparison with the conventional omni-directional AP/MNs network architecture. The peak data throughput of the proposed network architecture at the power level threshold of MNs for carrier sensing, ϒ_cs= -80 dBm is approximately 2.39, 3.59, and 3.85 times higher than for the conventional omni-directional AP/MNs network architecture at ϒ_cs= -88 dBm, ϒ_cs= -84 dBm, and ϒ_cs= -80 dBm, respectively. And, the power consumption of MNs per throughput in the proposed network architecture at ϒ_cs= -80 dBm is only 1.90%, 2.15%, and 9.79% of those of the conventional omni-directional AP/MNs network architecture at ϒ_cs= -80 dBm, ϒ_cs= -84 dBm, and ϒ_cs= -88 dBm, respectively, at an aggregate offered load of 1.0 (2.0 Mbps).