Scribd
Upload
7K views1 page

Motivation For A Specialized MAC

CSMA/CD, a MAC scheme commonly used in wired networks, is not well-suited for wireless networks for three key reasons: 1) In wireless networks, signal strength decreases significantly with distance so the sender detecting an idle medium does not guarantee no collisions at the more distant receiver. 2) This can lead to the "hidden terminal problem" where two senders outside of each other's range transmit simultaneously, causing a collision at the receiver. 3) Collision detection also does not work well since the sender may not detect a collision that occurs at the receiver due to differences in transmission and receiving power over the air.

Uploaded by

Eurasians
Copyright
© Attribution Non-Commercial (BY-NC)
We take content rights seriously. If you suspect this is your content, claim it here.
Available Formats
Download as DOC, PDF, TXT or read online on Scribd
7K views1 page

Motivation For A Specialized MAC

CSMA/CD, a MAC scheme commonly used in wired networks, is not well-suited for wireless networks for three key reasons: 1) In wireless networks, signal strength decreases significantly with distance so the sender detecting an idle medium does not guarantee no collisions at the more distant receiver. 2) This can lead to the "hidden terminal problem" where two senders outside of each other's range transmit simultaneously, causing a collision at the receiver. 3) Collision detection also does not work well since the sender may not detect a collision that occurs at the receiver due to differences in transmission and receiving power over the air.

Uploaded by

Eurasians
Copyright
© Attribution Non-Commercial (BY-NC)
We take content rights seriously. If you suspect this is your content, claim it here.
Available Formats
Download as DOC, PDF, TXT or read online on Scribd
You are on page 1/ 1

3.

1 Motivation for a specialized MAC The main question in connection with MAC in the wireless is whether it is possible to use elaborated MAC schemes from wired networks, for example, CSMA/CD as used in the original specification of IEEE 802.3 networks (aka Ethernet). So let us consider carrier sense multiple access with collision detection, (CSMA/CD) which works as follows. A sender senses the medium (a wire or coaxial cable) to see if it is free. If the medium is busy, the sender waits until it is free. If the medium is free, the sender starts transmitting data and continues to listen into the medium. If the sender detects a collision while sending, it stops at once and sends a jamming signal. Why does this scheme fail in wireless networks? CSMA/CD is not really interested in collisions at the sender, but rather in those at the receiver. The signal should reach the receiver without collisions. But the sender is the one detecting collisions. This is not a problem using a wire, as more or less the same signal strength can be assumed all over the wire if the length of the wire stays within certain often standardized limits. If a collision occurs somewhere in the wire, everybody will notice it. It does not matter if a sender listens into the medium to detect a collision at its own location while in reality is waiting to detect a possible collision at the receiver. The situation is different in wireless networks. As shown in chapter 2, the strength of a signal decreases proportionally to the square of the distance to the sender. Obstacles attenuate the signal even further. The sender may now apply carrier sense and detect an idle medium. The sender starts sending but a collision happens at the receiver due to a second sender. Section 3.1.1 explains this hidden terminal problem. The same can happen to the collision detection. The sender detects no collision and assumes that the data has been transmitted without errors, but a collision might actually have destroyed the data at the receiver. Collision detection is very difficult in wireless scenarios as the transmission power in the area of the transmitting antenna is several magnitudes higher than the receiving power. So, this very common MAC scheme from wired network fails in a wireless scenario.

You might also like