Power-Controlled Data Transmission in Wireless Ad-Hoc Networks: Challenges and Solutions

Energy scarcity and interference are two important factors determining the performance of wireless ad-hoc networks that should be considered in depth. A promising method of achieving energy conservation is the transmission power control. Transmission power control also contributes to the mitigation of interference thereby promotes throughput by means of rendering multiple hosts to communicate in the same neighborhood simultaneously without impairing each other's transmissions. However, as identified previously in the literature, traditional hidden terminal problem gets deteriorated when transmission power control mechanism is intended to be applied. In this article, we discuss the primary details about the power usage and throughput deficiency of the traditional 802.11 RTS/CTS mechanism. Improvements by means of power control are introduced as well as the solutions to the challenges likely to emerge because of the usage of diverse power levels throughout the network.