An adaptive RTS/CTS mechanism in IEEE 802.15.4 for multi-hop networks

IEEE 802.15.4 has poor performances in multi-hop network for the hidden terminal problem (HTP). This paper proposes a simple and effective mechanism to reduce the HTP in nonbeacon-enabled multi-hop network. Using the idea of RTS/CTS in IEEE 802.11 for reference, we propose adaptive adoption of RTS/CTS (a-RtsCts-CSMA/CA) depending on the collision result of transmissions and measure its performances in NS-2. The simulation results reveal that a-RtsCts-CSMA/CA outperforms RtsCts-CSMA/CA which use RTS/CTS every time before sending data packet and IEEE 802.15.4 unslotted CSMA/CA in energy consumption, end-to-end packet loss rate and end-to-end goodput.