Advanced power control techniques for interference mitigation in dense 802.11 networks

In this paper we propose an enhanced Transmit Power Control (TPC) scheme and a new fractional Carrier Sense Multiple Access with Collision A voidance (F-CSMA/CA) scheme for use in a dense 802.11 network. The new schemes improve the energy normalized Media Access Control Goodput performance in networks with overlapping Basic Service Sets (OBSSs) by mitigating the interference effect using TPC and reducing interference generated during neighboring BSS-edge transmission using inter-cell coordination. The scheme works seamlessly with a CSMA/CA multiple access technique, and is suitable for evolution of future WLAN systems such as IEEE 802.11ah [4], and High Efficiency WiFi (HEW) [5]. Numerical results demonstrate an increase in the normalized good put of up to 80% in downlink transmission and 100% in uplink transmission over existing schemes.