F-PCM: A fragmentation-based power control MAC protocol for IEEE 802.11 mobile ad hoc networks

A great deal of research has been directed toward reducing energy consumption at the 802.11-based MAC layer for mobile ad hoc networks (MANETs). There exists an approach that uses maximum power during the RTSCTS exchange and computes the required amount of power in order for DATA and ACK messages to reach the receiver and sender. It, however, does not consider the existence of an interference range (IR), or often called a carrier sensing zone. In order to address the problem, an existing approach forces nodes, located within a sender's carrier sensing zone, to defer their transmission trials in order to avoid collisions at the sender. It, however, does not consider possible collisions at the receiver, which can result in frequent retransmissions and hence greater energy consumption. Therefore, we propose an efficient protocol called Fragmentation-based Power Control MAC (F-PCM), which utilizes the fragmentation mechanism of the IEEE 802.11 MAC protocol so as to avoid collisions at senders as well as those at receivers. Through extensive simulations, our F-PCM has performed better in terms of providing a higher throughput and incurring lower energy consumption. This is particularly advantageous in a dense mobile network environment where collisions are more severe.