Performance Investigation of Backoff Algorithms in Multihop Wireless Networks

In a multihop wireless network, the throughput performance decreases seriously because of inter-flow and intra-flow collision. The backoff algorithm is the de facto function to resolve collision in 802.11 networks. In this paper we study the impact of five back-off algorithms on the performance of 802.11-based multihop wireless networks with different network topology and flow patterns. Simulations show that the backoff algorithms have big influence on the performance of both UDP and TCP flows. But none of the current backoff algorithms can improve the throughput and fairness performance in multihop wireless networks efficiently. It shows that the traditional random backoff algorithms are no longer suitable for collision resolution in distributed multihop wireless networks.