Optimizing the performance of non-fading and fading networks using CSMA with joint transmitter and receiver sensing

We consider a mobile ad hoc network where packets belonging to specific transmitters arrive randomly in space and time according to a 3-D Poisson point process, and are upon arrival transmitted to their intended destinations using the carrier sensing multiple access (CSMA) MAC protocol. A packet transmission is considered successful if the received SINR is above a predefined threshold for the duration of the packet. A simple fully-distributed joint transmitter-receiver sensing scheme is proposed for the CSMA protocol to improve its performance in both non-fading and fading networks. The outage probability of this enhanced version of CSMA is derived and optimized with respect to the sensing thresholds. In order to derive a mathematical expression for the optimal sensing thresholds, the inherent hidden and exposed node problems of CSMA are considered and efficiently balanced. The performance of this improved CSMA protocol is compared to the other flavors of CSMA, and shown to bring about significant performance gain.