2966

IEEE TRANSACTIONS ON VEHICULAR TECHNOLOGY, VOL. 58, NO. 6, JULY 2009

Power-Fixed and Power-Aware MAC Protocols for

Multihop Wireless Networks With a Large
Interference Area
Supeng Leng, Member, IEEE, Yan Zhang, Member, IEEE, Hsiao-Hwa Chen, Senior Member, IEEE,
Jie Xiang, and Mohsen Guizani, Senior Member, IEEE

AbstractThe IEEE 802.11 medium-access control (MAC) protocol is usually considered to be a default standard in multihop
wireless networks. However, in a multihop network with a large
interference range, the request-to-send/clear-to-send (RTS/CTS)
handshake and virtual carrier sensing mechanism may not be able
to eliminate interference or solve hidden- and exposed-terminal
problems. This paper proposes two new MAC protocols, i.e., the
power-fixed dual (PFD) and power-aware dual (PAD) busy-tone
schemes, both of which are able to effectively prevent collision
of data/acknowledgment (ACK) packets and are applicable in
various open-space environments with different path-loss characteristics. Analytical models are developed to evaluate their performance in terms of the blocking area, saturation throughput, and
capability of mitigating aggregate interference of simultaneous
transmissions. Numerical examples are presented to show the
effectiveness of the proposed MAC protocols and the interaction
between performance metrics and key parameters. Analysis and
simulation results indicate that both PFD and PAD schemes can
achieve a much higher throughput and a lower packet-collision
ratio than IEEE 802.11 distributed coordination function (DCF),
conservative CTS reply (CCR), and dual busy-tone multiple-access (DBTMA) schemes.
Index TermsAd hoc network, IEEE 802.11, large interference
area, medium-access control (MAC), multihop wireless network,
power control.

I. I NTRODUCTION

MULTIHOP wireless network carries its salient features

of self-organization, self-configuration, and self-healing.
However, its property of lacking fixed infrastructure makes
the design of an efficient medium-access control (MAC) protocol challenging. Distributed random-access MAC protocols
are usually employed in multihop wireless networks. HowManuscript received May 16, 2007; revised December 6, 2007, June 22,
2008, and October 17, 2008. First published January 6, 2009; current version
published May 29, 2009. This work was supported in part by the National
Natural Science Foundation of China under Grant 60802024, the Research
Fund for the Doctoral Program of Higher Education of China under Grant
200806141014, and in part by the National Science Council of Taiwan under
Grant NSC97-2219-E-006-004. The review of this paper was coordinated by
Prof. J. Li.
S. Leng is with the National Communication Laboratory, University of
Electronic Science and Technology of China, Chengdu 610054, China (e-mail:
spleng@uestc.edu.cn).
Y. Zhang and J. Xiang are with Simula Research Laboratory, 1325 Lysaker,
Norway (e-mail: yanzhang@ieee.org; jxiang@ieee.org).
H.-H. Chen is with the Department of Engineering Science, National Cheng
Kung University, Tainan 701, Taiwan (e-mail: hshwchen@ieee.org).
M. Guizani is with the Department of Computer Science, Western Michigan
University, Kalamazoo, MI 49008-5314 USA (e-mail: mguizani@ieee.org).
Digital Object Identifier 10.1109/TVT.2008.2012157

ever, randomly distributed MAC protocols generate hiddenand exposed-terminal problems [5]. IEEE 802.11 is the standard for wireless local area networks (wireless LANs) based
mainly on the carrier-sense multiple-access/collision-avoidance
(CSMA/CA) technique. Most mobile ad hoc networks utilize
the standardized IEEE 802.11 distributed coordination function
(DCF) as their MAC protocol. Since IEEE 802.11 DCF was not
originally designed for multihop wireless networks, its requestto-send/clear-to-send (RTS/CTS) handshaking is not able to
effectively solve the hidden-terminal problem [2]. This problem
becomes more serious when the interference range increases in
a multihop wireless network.
Recently, a lot of effort has been made to study the effect
of a large interference range on multihop network performance
(e.g., [1], [2], and [5]). Here, the term large interference
range denotes the situation that the interference range of a
host is larger than its transmission range. The design of these
traditional MAC protocols was usually based on the assumption
that the interference range of a mobile host is the same as its
transmission range. This ideal assumption may not match the
realistic environment. As a consequence, few MAC protocols
are able to achieve expected performance when the largeinterference-area problem is present [6][14].
A. Related Works
In a multihop wireless network, the RTS/CTS handshake
alone is not capable of resolving the large-interference-area
problem. The interference range I of a host significantly
increases with the transmitterreceiver distance x. When the
distance x is larger than a threshold th , I is greater than
the hosts transmission range . Consequently, the hosts within
the interference range may not be able to receive either RTS or
CTS if using the CSMA/CA protocol. Thereafter, due to the unavailability of duration information of ongoing transmissions,
these hidden hosts are unable to correctly set the field network
allocation vector (NAV), which is used to indicate whether the
channel is busy or not. If there is an interfering host that is
transmitting packets, the ongoing transmission is interrupted.
This type of communication interruption demonstrates that
the RTS/CTS handshake alone is ineffective to address the
large-interference-area problem when the transmitterreceiver
distance x is larger than th .
In the literature, the MAC protocols were designed based on
the assumption that the interference range of a mobile host is

0018-9545/$25.00 2009 IEEE

Authorized licensed use limited to: UNIVERSITY OF PLYMOUTH. Downloaded on October 11, 2009 at 02:27 from IEEE Xplore. Restrictions apply.

LENG et al.: MAC PROTOCOLS FOR MULTIHOP WIRELESS NETWORKS WITH A LARGE INTERFERENCE AREA

2967

directions with a lower antenna gain. It was shown that RBF

achieves better performance than CCR. However, the additional
hardware needed in RBF is not easy for implementation in
practical applications. The interference-aware MAC [4] protocol was presented to enhance the IEEE 802.11 protocol, where
the receiving signal power and interference level information
were inserted into the MAC control packet. However, the
scheme cannot be cost-effectively implemented either.
B. Our Contributions

Fig. 1.

System model.

the same as its transmission range [6][14]. Under this ideal

assumption, the dual busy-tone multiple-access (DBTMA)
protocol [7] is an efficient scheme and is able to address both
hidden-terminal and exposed-terminal problems. DBTMA
introduces two out-of-band busy tones to indicate the ongoing
transmissions, in which one busy tone indicates busy transmitting and the other shows busy receiving. Fig. 1 shows an example with significantly degraded performance in DBTMA due to
its large interference range. For an ongoing transmission from
host i to host j, host m cannot hear the busy tones since host m
resides outside the radio coverage of i and j. In this case, the
packet transmission originated from host m may cause interference to host j, leading to communication interruption between
hosts i and j. A recent study in [19] reported a randomly ranked
mini slots with busy tone MAC protocol, which can achieve
a good balance between two conflicting performance metrics:
throughput and fairness. The introduced busy tone provides
a protection for data packet and a solution to the exposedterminal problem. The work in [20] proposed a MAC protocol
with a busy tone. The backoff procedure is executed in the busy
tone instead of the data channel. With this modification, there
is almost no wasted timeslot in the data channel. However, just
like DBTMA, the aforementioned two busy-tone-aided MAC
protocols ignore the difference between the transmission and
interference ranges. The promised performance under an ideal
situation does not match the real multihop wireless network
environment. In the work reported in [8], three schemes were
proposed to modify IEEE 802.11 to apply pipelining techniques. The partial pipelining scheme uses a busy-tone channel
to reduce the data channel contention. In the study reported
in [9], a priority scheduling MAC protocol was presented to
provide prioritized access by using two narrow-band busy
tones. However, these two protocols did not consider the effect
of a large interference range in multihop wireless networks.
The study conducted in [1] proposed two schemes to reduce
the interference for IEEE 802.11-based ad hoc networks. In the
first scheme, called conservative CTS reply (CCR), a mobile
host only replies CTS for RTS request when the receiving
signal power of RTS is above a certain threshold. The drawback
of CCR is that the effective transmission range is reduced to
31.4%, which leads to a much lower network connectivity. In
the second scheme, named receiving beam forming (RBF), a
directional antenna was deployed to avoid interference from the

This paper will propose two MAC protocols for multihop

wireless networks, i.e., the power-fixed dual (PFD) and poweraware dual (PAD) busy-tone schemes, both of which are able to
effectively solve the hidden- and exposed-terminal problems.
The PFD scheme is IEEE 802.11 back compatible, and hence,
it can cost-effectively be implemented in most existing systems.
The PAD scheme is a joint power control and busy tone
strategy. The transmission power of busy tones is dynamically
adjustable to indicate the interference range. This enables immediate release of the channel resource upon the instant of
RTS/CTS collision. Both protocols can avoid the collision of
data/acknowledgment (ACK) packets.
The following salient advantages of our work exist, thus
making it different from the existing schemes. First, the dual
busy tones in the proposed MAC protocols are used to adaptively indicate the large inference. Numerical results indicate
that both PFD and PAD can achieve a much higher throughput
and a lower packet-collision ratio if compared with IEEE
802.11 DCF, CCR, and DBTMA. Second, different from all
existing MAC protocols that are only applicable in a tworay ground path-loss scenario, the proposed PFD and PAD
schemes well suit for various open-space environments with
different path-loss characteristics. Third, analytical models are
developed to evaluate the performance of IEEE 802.11 DCF
family protocols in a large-interference-range wireless environment, in terms of the blocking area and saturation throughput.
In addition, we will also address the aggregate interference
problem caused by simultaneous transmissions in open-space
environments. We will analyze the capacity of dual busy tones
for indicating the aggregate interference range.
The rest of this paper is outlined as follows: In Section II,
the PFD and PAD schemes are described in detail. Section III
presents the analysis model to derive the blocking area and
saturation throughput of the proposed MAC schemes in an
open-space environment. The aggregate interference problem
is also discussed. Section IV presents the performance evaluation using theoretical analysis and simulation, followed by
Section V, which concludes this paper.
II. PFD AND PAD MAC P ROTOCOLS
In this section, we will introduce our two MAC protocols for
multihop wireless networks with a large interference range. The
first protocol is the PFD scheme, which uses dual busy tones to
identify the maximum possible range of interference. The dual
busy tones are transmitted only when the interference range
is larger than the transmission range. The second protocol is

Authorized licensed use limited to: UNIVERSITY OF PLYMOUTH. Downloaded on October 11, 2009 at 02:27 from IEEE Xplore. Restrictions apply.

2968

IEEE TRANSACTIONS ON VEHICULAR TECHNOLOGY, VOL. 58, NO. 6, JULY 2009

the PAD scheme, in which the busy tones are transmitted with
an adaptive power level such that they can exactly indicate the
instantaneous interference range.
In the proposed MAC protocols, data and control packets
share a single physical channel. Two out-of-band busy tones
(sine waves), i.e., the transmitting busy tone BTt and the
receiving busy tone BTr , are placed at different frequencies
with a sufficient frequency guard band in the signal channel.
Unlike RTS and CTS packets, busy tones do not collide. Since
busy tones can always stay on to avoid any potential interfering
host within the entire transmission duration of a packet, the
busy tones provide protection for data packets and a complete
solution to both hidden- and exposed-terminal problems. On
the other hand, since busy tones change the single-channel
assumption of IEEE 802.11, it may be difficult to directly use
busy tones in the current IEEE 802.11 MAC. However, some
latest international (draft) standards, such as IEEE 802.11p
together with IEEE 1609.4 for vehicular wireless networks
[11], apply the multichannel media-access control mechanism
to improve the transmission efficiency. It is likely that busytone-aided MAC schemes can easily be compatible with new
IEEE 802.11 standards in the near future.
Fig. 1 shows the system model, where we presume that host i
transmits data packets to host j with a distance x meters. When
there is an ongoing communication between hosts i and j, other
hosts in the neighborhood may transmit packets and become the
potential interfering hosts. Let r denote the radio transmission
range of hosts in a multihop wireless network. In the openspace environment, if the transmission power of a packet at the
transmitter is Pt , the received signal power at the distance x is
given by [3]
Pr (x) =

Pt Gt Gr h2t h2r
xk

(1)

where Gt and Gr are the antenna gains of the transmitter and

receiver, respectively, ht and hr denote the antenna heights, and
the parameter k reflects how fast the signal decays.
The energy detected by a receiver consists of the signal
from the transmitter, interference from unwanted transmitters,
and noise. In most cases, the noise level is negligible if compared with the signal and interference. Hence, the signal-tointerference ratio (SIR) is considered, and a signal at a receiver
is valid only if its measured SIR is no lower than a threshold
TSIR [1].
Let Pj represent the power of the interference signal at host
j with a distance y meters from the interfering host. Then, host
j is able to successfully receive packets from host i ifSIR =
Pr (x)/Pj (y) = (y/x)k TSIR . This leads to y x k TSIR .
Thereafter, the interference range of a receiver is defined as

(2)
rI = x k TSIR .
In a realistic environment, TSIR is usually larger than 1 dB,
and k is greater than two. By adjusting the values of the SIR
threshold TSIR and k, the proposed MAC schemes are applicable in various open-space environments with different path-loss
models. Specifically, in the situation of two-ray ground pathloss model [1], [3], TSIR is usually equal to 10 dB, and k is 4.

In this case, the interference range becomes rI = 4 10 x

1.78x.
When the distance x between hosts i and j is larger than
r(TSIR )1/k , the transmission range is shorter than the interference range (as shown by the shadow area in Fig. 1). Since
0
x r, the maximum interference range is rImax = r k TSIR .
The potential interfering hosts, such as hosts m and n shown
in Fig. 1, reside within the range of the radius between r and
rImax . In this case, when the transmission from host i to host j
is in progress, either the RTS/CTS handshake in IEEE 802.11
DCF or the busy tones in the DBTMA scheme cannot prevent
possible collisions caused by the transmission from host m
(or n) to host p (or q).
A. PFD Busy-Tone Scheme
In the PFD scheme, a mobile host is able to transmit packets
only if the channel is idle and no busy tones can be detected.
As shown in Fig. 1, to defer possible transmissions of all interfering hosts during the data transmission from host i to host j,
the receiving busy tone BTr should cover the maximum interference range of host j, and the transmitting busy tone should
cover the maximum interference range of host i. If a busy tone
is transmitted with the maximum power level PBTmax , then the
receiving power of the busy tone at the distance rImax should be
at least equal to the signal power threshold PBTth for a mobile
host to detect the busy tone. Based on (1), the maximum power
level PBTmax is given by
PBTmax =

PBTth TSIR rk
.
Gt Gr h2t h2r

(3)

1/k

When x = rTSIR , the interference range of a host is equal to

its transmission range. The receiving power of a packet from
1/k
the sender at x = rTSIR is given by
Pcrt =

TSIR Pt Gt Gr h2t h2r

.
rk

(4)

The procedure of PFD is described as follows: When host j

receives RTS from host i, host j checks whether the receiving
signal power Pr (x) is lower than the threshold Pcrt . If Pr (x) <
Pcrt , i.e., the interference range is larger than the transmission
range, then hosts i and j will transmit busy tones BTt and BTr ,
respectively. As shown in Fig. 2, host j transmits BTr with
the maximum transmission power PBTmax after it sends CTS
to host i, and host i transmits BTt with power PBTmax during
the transmission of the data packets and ACK. At the same
time, upon receiving RTS or CTS, all neighboring hosts of i
and j set their own NAV according to the duration information
embedded in RTS/CTS. These neighboring hosts refrain from
their transmissions if BTt or BTr is detected, or their NAV
indicates that the channel is currently busy. Therefore, if x >
1/k
rTSIR , the PFD scheme utilizes the dual busy tones to identify
the maximum interference range. In this case, both dual busy
tones and the virtual carrier sensing (VCS) mechanism are
employed to combat interference. On the other hand, if Pr (x) >
Pcrt , hosts i and j communicate using IEEE 802.11 DCF.

Authorized licensed use limited to: UNIVERSITY OF PLYMOUTH. Downloaded on October 11, 2009 at 02:27 from IEEE Xplore. Restrictions apply.

LENG et al.: MAC PROTOCOLS FOR MULTIHOP WIRELESS NETWORKS WITH A LARGE INTERFERENCE AREA

2969

Fig. 3. Transmission period of PAD.

Fig. 2.

1/k

PFD transmission period, x > rTSIR .

Compared with IEEE 802.11 DCF, PFD only requires additional dual busy tones, which are transmitted with the maximum
power PBTmax if the interference range is larger than the transmission range. A PFD-enabled host should sense a busy tone
around before it intends to send out a packet. Accordingly, those
hosts that do not hear RTS/CTS can sense busy tones and defer
their transmissions during an ongoing communication. As a
result, PFD is able to solve the hidden-terminal problem caused
by the large interference range. For instance, as shown in Fig. 1,
during the data transmission from host i to host j, the dual busy
tones in the PFD scheme are able to prohibit all transmissions
from the potential interfering host m or n. Since the dual busy
tones are always transmitted with the highest power level, the
spatial region reserved for the ongoing traffic is larger than the
interference range. In this case, the exposed-terminal problem
in PFD may be worse than that in IEEE 802.11.
B. PAD Busy-Tone Scheme
To improve spatial reuse, we propose the PAD protocol with
a power control strategy by adaptively adjusting the transmission power of the busy tones. The power level is able to exactly
indicate the interference range. Fig. 1 shows that within PAD,
during the transmission of a data packet from host i to host j,
the transmitting busy tone BTr from host i covers host js
interference range, and the transmitting busy tone BTt from
host j covers host is interference range. Furthermore, the VCS
and physical channel sensing implemented in IEEE 802.11
DCF are replaced by the component of busy-tone detection.
A PAD-compatible host can transmit a packet only if no busy
tones are detected. Fig. 3 shows the time sequence in PAD, as
explained in the list that follows.
1) Before host i intends to send RTS to host j, host i first
senses busy tones around. If no busy tones are heard
during the DCF interframe space (DIFS) period, host i
sends out RTS and initializes BTt transmission with the
maximum power level PBTmax .
2) Upon receiving RTS, host j senses the receiving busy
tone BTr around. If BTr is detected during the short
interframe space (SIFS) period, host j ignores RTS.
Otherwise, host j replies with CTS and transmits the
receiving busy tone BTr with the transmission power
level PBT (x).

3) After sending out RTS, host i waits for an interval with

length CTSTout . If CTS can correctly be received during
this interval, host i starts to transmit its data packet and, at
the same time, adjusts the transmission power of BTt to
PBT (x). Otherwise, i turns off BTt and triggers a backoff
procedure for retransmission at time t1 (after CTSTout
has expired).
4) After replying CTS to host i, host j prepares to receive
the data packets. If the data packet can reach j within
the SIFS period, j keeps on transmitting BTr with the
transmission power PBT (x) until the transmission of
data packets is completed. Otherwise, j assumes that the
RTS/CTS handshake has failed, and it turns off BTr at the
moment t1 .
5) Upon receiving the data packet, host j replies with ACK
to confirm the successful transmission. After the data
packet is transmitted from host j, it will wait for an
ACKTout interval. If the ACK from host j can be received
within ACKTout , host i turns off BTt and completes
this successful transmission. Otherwise, if no ACK is
received in host i, it will turn off BTt and invokes a
backoff procedure for retransmission upon the expiration
of ACKTout .
In Step 1), when host i starts to transmit RTS, it launches
the transmitting busy tone BTt with the maximum power
PBTmax . This power level is determined by (4). The purpose of
transmitting BTt together with RTS is to inform all hosts inside
the maximum interference range of host i that a new RTS/CTS
dialogue is in progress. Accordingly, any other transmissions
that may potentially corrupt the reception of CTS at host i are
prohibited by BTt . On the other hand, during the transmission
of the data/ACK packet, the coverage of dual busy tones is
identical to the interference ranges of hosts i and j. Let PBT (x)
denote the transmission signal power of BTt or BTr . The signal
power of BTt or BTr received from a transmitter rI meters
away should be at least equal to the threshold of the busy-tone
power PBTth . Hence, we have
PBTth =

PBT (x)Gt Gr h2t h2r

PBT (x)Gt Gr h2t h2r
=
.
TSIR xk
rIk

(5)

Dividing (5) by (1), we obtain the transmission power of BTt

or BTr as
PBT (x) =

TSIR PBTth Pt
Pr (x)

Authorized licensed use limited to: UNIVERSITY OF PLYMOUTH. Downloaded on October 11, 2009 at 02:27 from IEEE Xplore. Restrictions apply.

(6)

2970

IEEE TRANSACTIONS ON VEHICULAR TECHNOLOGY, VOL. 58, NO. 6, JULY 2009

where Pt is the transmission power of the date/control packet,

and Pr (x) is the receiving signal power of RTS/CTS. In this
way, upon receiving RTS or CTS, either host i or j can
determine PBT (x) by using (6).
The previously explained procedure indicates that PAD can
efficiently solve the hidden-terminal problem since all interfering hosts located inside the coverage of dual busy tones will
defer their transmissions. As the coverage of dual busy tones
is always equal to the interference range, the hosts outside
the interference range of the current communicating pair are
allowed to access the channel. For example, in Fig. 1, host f is
able to send a packet to host u during the ongoing transmission
from host i to host j.
It is also clear that PAD can efficiently address the exposedterminal problem. In IEEE 802.11 DCF, an unsuccessful
RTS/CTS handshake will prohibit all neighboring hosts from
transmitting packets until the interval reserved by RTS/CTS
has expired. For instance, a corrupted RTS from host i shown
in Fig. 1 will defer the transmission from host a to host p for
a long period. This will waste a precious channel resource. In
contrast, once a failed RTS/CTS handshake is detected in PAD,
the transmitter and receiver immediately turn off their own busy
tones and allow their neighboring hosts to transmit.
III. S YSTEM M ODEL AND A NALYSIS
In this section, we will develop an analytical model to evaluate the performance of IEEE 802.11 DCF, PFD, and PAD in
a multihop wireless network with a large interference range. In
particular, the performance metrics with respect to the blocking
area and saturation throughput will be derived. We consider
the situation that host i transmits a data packet to one of its
neighboring hosts j at distance x.
A. Blocking Area
The blocking area is defined as the reserved area for an
ongoing communication. For a given duration, no hosts within
the blocking area are allowed to transmit packets. Since the
blocking area directly affects the maximum number of simultaneous transmissions in a multihop network, it can serve as an
important performance metric to evaluate spatial reuse. Based
on the fact that the data transmission period is much longer than
that of the RTS/CTS handshake signal, the area reserved for
the data transmission represents the blocking area for the whole
transmission process. The derivation of the blocking area can
be found in [17].
Fig. 4 shows the blocking area versus the relative distance
x/r in the two-ray ground path-loss model (TSIR = 10 dB and
k = 4). It is observed that the blocking area for each scheme
monotonously increases with the distance. As the blocking
area of PAD always coincides with the interference range,
the blocking area is the optimal value to balance the tradeoff
between spatial reuse and collision avoidance. Comparing the
blocking areas of PAD and IEEE 802.11, we find that if x
0.56r, the former is less than the later. In this case, the RTS/CTS
dialogue in 802.11 may give false alarms to the hosts outside the
interference range. This leads to a substantially reduced spatial

Fig. 4.

Blocking area versus relative distance (TSIR = 10 dB and k = 4).

reuse factor. On the other hand, if x > 0.56r, the blocking area
of PAD is larger than that of IEEE 802.11. However, the tight
blocking area reserved by IEEE 802.11 cannot efficiently avoid
collisions (the analysis can be found in the next section). Fig. 4
also shows that if x 0.56r, PFD has the same blocking area
as IEEE 802.11. When x > 0.56r, PFD has the largest blocking
area among all the three protocols.
B. Saturation Throughput
The saturation throughput represents the throughput in a
heavy traffic situation, i.e., host i always has a packet in its
buffer to send, and the receiver host j is randomly chosen
from one of its neighboring hosts. This performance metric is
very important, and an approximating model was developed
by Takagi and Kleinrock [15] and used to study carrier-sense
multiple access and busy-tone multiple access [16]. In this
paper, we will develop an analytical model to evaluate the
saturation throughput in PFD and PAD under a general pathloss model for open-space environments.
Assume that mobile hosts are distributed in a multihop
wireless network as a 2-D Poisson point process with its density
[15], [16]. Let Pr (i, S) denote the probability that i hosts are
found within area S. Pr (i, S) is given by
Pr (i, S) =

(S)i S
e
.
i!

(7)

The average number of neighboring hosts (the average host

degree) within a circular region of radius r can be expressed
as d = r2 .
The performance of carrier-sensing-based MAC protocols is
the same as that of their time-slotted counterparts, where the
length of a timeslot is much shorter than the transmission time
of a data packet [5], [16]. Hence, the hosts operate in a timeslotted mode, and the length of each timeslot is equal to the
SIFS interval defined in IEEE 802.11, which includes the
propagation delay, transmit-to-receive turnaround time, carrier
sensing delay, and processing time. Let tRTS , tCTS , tDATA , and
tACK , respectively, denote the transmission time of RTS, CTS,
data, and ACK packets normalized by . The probability p
that a host transmits in a timeslot is independent at any timeslot. Here, p is a protocol-specific parameter, depending on

Authorized licensed use limited to: UNIVERSITY OF PLYMOUTH. Downloaded on October 11, 2009 at 02:27 from IEEE Xplore. Restrictions apply.

LENG et al.: MAC PROTOCOLS FOR MULTIHOP WIRELESS NETWORKS WITH A LARGE INTERFERENCE AREA

2971

TABLE I
PROBABILITY COMPUTATION FOR IEEE 802.11

Fig. 5.

Markov chain model for IEEE 802.11.

the channels status, collision avoidance, and specific backoff

procedures.
1) IEEE 802.11 DCF: Fig. 5 shows the states transition of
host i with a four-state Markov chain. In the figure, W ait
is the state that host i defers for transmission or backs off,
Succeed is the state that host i can complete a successful
four-way handshake, Cf ail is the state that host i initiates an
unsuccessful RTS/CTS handshake, and Df ail is the state that
the data/ACK dialogue fails due to collision after a successful
RTS/CTS handshake.
In Fig. 5, the event that host i continues to stay in the W ait
state occurs when host i does not initiate any transmission
and none of is neighboring hosts initiates a transmission in
one timeslot. The probability that a host does not transmit
in a timeslot is 1 p , and the probability that none of is
neighboring hosts transmits in the same slot is given by

(1 p )i

i=0

di d

e = ep d .
i!

(8)

Hence, the transition probability that i stays in the W ait state

can be obtained as


PrWW = (1 p )ep d .

(9)

If no host is allowed to continuously transmit data packets,

the transition probabilities from other states to W ait should
be 1. Furthermore, the duration of each state is given by

T
=

Wait
TSucceed = tRTS +tCTS +tDATA +tACK +3 +DIFS
(10)

TDfail = tRTS +tCTS +tDATA +2 +ACKTout +DIFS

TCfail = tRTS +CTSTout +DIFS
where DIFS, ACKTout , and CTSTout are the system parameters
defined in IEEE 802.11 DCF [10].
Let PrWS (x) denote the probability that host i successfully
completes a transmission to host j at distance x. Let PrRTS (x),
PrCTS (x), PrDATA (x), and PrACK (x) denote the probabilities


(rA , rB , x) =

0,
1
2

that RTS, CTS, data, and ACK packets are successfully received, respectively. PrWS (x) is given by
PrWS (x) = p (1 p )PrRTS (x)PrCTS (x)PrDATA (x)PrACK (x).
(11)
Let PrWD (x) denote the probability that the data/ACK dialogue fails due to collision after a successful RTS/CTS handshake. Then, we have
PrWD (x) = p (1 p )PrRTS (x)PrCTS (x)
{1 PrDATA (x) + PrDATA (x) [1 PrACK (x)]}

(12)

where the term 1 PrDATA (x) represents the probability that

collision occurs during the transmission of a data packet, and
the term PrDATA (x)[1 PrACK (x)] gives the probability that
collision happens in the transmission of ACK.
The probabilities in (11) and (12) vary with the
transmitterreceiver distance x, which determines the relationship between the transmission and interference ranges of
mobile hosts. To make the analysis tractable, we assume that all
collisions at hosts i and j are caused by RTS packets transmitted
from interfering hosts. The probability of other collisions is
considered to be negligibly low. To successfully transmit a
particular type of data/control packet between hosts i and j, the
hosts inside an interfering area should not transmit packets for
a certain time interval, which is called the vulnerable period.
The detail of the vulnerable periods and interfering areas can
be found in [18]. Due to the limited length, this paper only
provides the formulas of the probabilities under IEEE 802.11
DCF in Table I, where = arccos((rI2 + x2 r2 )/2rI x).
Moreover, consider two circles with an intersection area. The
radii of the two circles are rA and rB (rA > rB ), respectively.
rB , x) in (13), shown at the bottom of the
We define (rA ,
2 (x2 + r 2 r 2 )2 .
page, where = 4x2 rA
A
B

2 2 2
2 2 2  x rA rB

2


x +rA rB
x rA +rB
2
2
2
+ rB arctan
, rA rB < x rA
rB rA + + rA arctan

Authorized licensed use limited to: UNIVERSITY OF PLYMOUTH. Downloaded on October 11, 2009 at 02:27 from IEEE Xplore. Restrictions apply.

(13)

2972

IEEE TRANSACTIONS ON VEHICULAR TECHNOLOGY, VOL. 58, NO. 6, JULY 2009

Based on (11), the transition probability PrWS is given by

r

2x
2p (1 p )
P
(x)dx
=
r
r2 WS
r2

PrWS =
0

THPFD =

r

xPrRTS (x)PrCTS (x)PrDATA (x)PrACK (x)dx.

(14)

From (12), the transition probability PrWD from the W ait state
to the Df ail state is derived as
PrWD

2p (1 p )
=
r2

r

PrWS (x) = p (1 p )PrRTS (x).

W PrWW + S + D + C = W .

(15)

(16)

(23)

1
1
=
.
2 PrWW
2 (1 p )ep d

According to the vulnerable periods and the interfering areas

for the RTS transmission in PAD [18], the probability for the
successful reception of RTS can be expressed as



1/k
ep rI2 , x r
1 + TSIR


(24)
PrRTS (x) =
1/k
ep ,
<xr
r
1 + TSIR
where = rI2 + 2tRTS (rImax , rI , x). Based on (23), the
transition probability PrWS is given by

Based on (9) and (16), we have

(17)

PrWS

Since S = W PrWS and D = W PrWD , the probability C

is expressed as
C = 1 W (1 + PrWS + PrWD ).

(18)

Let TH802.11 denote the saturation throughput in IEEE

802.11. The saturation throughput is equal to the fraction of
time in which the channel is engaged in a successful packet
transmission. Hence, TH802.11 is given by
S tDATA
.
W TWait +S TSucceed +D TDfail +C TCfail
(19)

2) PFD Busy-Tone Scheme: Since PFD uses the same

RTS/CTS handshake protocol as IEEE 802.11, the probabilities
of the successful reception of RTS and CTS in PFD are identical
to those in IEEE 802.11. Differently, dual busy tones employed
in PFD is able to avoid all collisions during data and ACK
transmissions, and the transit states of host i in PFD can be
represented by a three-state Markov chain, i.e., W ait, Succeed,
and Cf ail states. The Df ail state shown in Fig. 5 disappears
in PFD. In this case, the transition probability PrWS can be
written as
PrWS =

(22)

Let W , S , C , and D denote the steady-state probabilities

of the W ait, Succeed, Cf ail, and Df ail states, respectively.
In Fig. 5, it can be found that

TH802.11 =

S tDATA
.
W TWait + S TSucceed + C TCfail

3) PAD Busy-Tone Scheme: The transit states of host i in

PAD can be expressed as a three-state Markov chain, including
W ait, Succeed, and Cf ail states. In PAD, since the transmissions of CTS, data, and ACK packets are always protected
by dual busy tones, the possible collisions happen only when
RTS is sent from host i to host j. The probability that host i
successfully completes the data transmission to host j at distance x is given by

xPrRTS (x)PrCTS (x)

{1 PrDATA (x) + PrDATA (x) [1 PrACK (x)]} dx.

W =

Consequently, the throughput in PFD can be expressed by

2p (1 p )
r2

r
xPrRTS (x)PrCTS (x)dx.

(20)

Since S = W PrWS , the steady-state probability of the Cf ail

state is obtained as
C = 1 W S = 1 W (1 + PrWS ).

(21)

2p (1 p )
=
r2

r
xPrRTS (x)dx.

(25)

The event that host i continues to stay in the W ait state

happens when host i does not initiate any transmission and none
of the hosts in the area SImax = rI2max transmits in the same


slot. Hence, PrWW = (1 p )ep rImax , and W is given by

W =

1
1

=
.
2 PrWW
2 (1 p )e 10p r2

(26)

The steady-state probability of the Cf ail state is obtained as

C = 1 W S = 1 W (1 + PrWS ).

(27)

Consequently, the saturation throughput in PAD can be expressed as

THPAD =

S tDATA
.
W TWait + S TSucceed + C TCfail

(28)

C. Interference by Simultaneous Transmissions

In this section, we discuss the proposed MAC protocols with
multiple transmissions in wireless networks. In such a case,
a receiver is able to receive the aggregate energy from all
simultaneous transmissions in the network, which will enlarge
the interference range of each receiver and the sensing ranges
of busy tones.
As shown in Fig. 1, when host i is going to transmit data
packets to host j, there are simultaneous transmitterreceiver
pairs residing outside the busy tone coverage of hosts i and j.

Authorized licensed use limited to: UNIVERSITY OF PLYMOUTH. Downloaded on October 11, 2009 at 02:27 from IEEE Xplore. Restrictions apply.

LENG et al.: MAC PROTOCOLS FOR MULTIHOP WIRELESS NETWORKS WITH A LARGE INTERFERENCE AREA

These transmissions are regarded as interference for host j. Let

Nt and Nr denote all simultaneous transmitters and receivers
in the time instant, respectively. Let x denote the distance
between two arbitrary hosts and in the network. The
receiver host j can successfully receive a packet only if the SIR
is no less than the threshold TSIR , or


Pr (xij )
Pr (xj ) TSIR .
(29)
Nt , =i

From (1), the condition can be expressed as


TSIR xkij
xk
j 1.

(30)

Nt , =i

In this case, the RTS/CTS handshake in IEEE 802.11 DCF is

helpless for indicating the enlarged interference range caused
by simultaneous transmissions.
On the other hand, the receiving power of busy tones from
different transmitterreceiver pairs is also accumulated at each
host, which enlarges the sensing ranges of busy tones. With the
PFD scheme, an intending receiver host j can sense BTr if the
aggregate energy from simultaneous receivers in the network is
larger than the busy-tone power threshold, i.e.,

PBTj > PBTth .
(31)
Nr

For every transmission pair with the transmitter and the

receiver , PBTj is the BTr strength received at j, or

PBTmax Gt Gr h2t h2r
1/k
, rTSIR < x r
xk
PBTj =
(32)
j
0,
otherwise.
Based on (4), (31), and (32), the condition that hosts i and j can
transmit a packet is given by

xk
(33)
TSIR rk
j 1.
Nt , Nr
1/k
<x r
SIR

rT

Likewise, under the PAD protocol, the condition that the

transmission between hosts i and j can proceed is given by



TSIR
xk xk
1.
(34)
j
Nt , Nr

Since the distance between a transmission pair is normally

much shorter than the distance between two simultaneous transmission pairs, we can regard the distance from the transmitter
or receiver of a transmission pair to that of another transmission
pair as the same. Comparing (30) and (33), we can find that if
all simultaneous transmission pairs transmit dual busy tones,
1/k
i.e., x > rTSIR , then (33) covers the condition of (30). In
other words, the dual busy tones of PFD can partially indicate
the aggregate interference. If we modify PFD to make any
transmission together with dual busy tones, the coverage ranges
of busy tones are always larger than the aggregate interference
range. However, spatial reuse will further be sacrificed in such

2973

TABLE II
FHSS SYSTEM PARAMETERS

a case. Furthermore, from (30) and (34), it is clear that the

PAD protocol can signify the aggregate interference caused by
simultaneous transmissions in the network. However, the dual
busy tones are unable to always cover the aggregate interference
ranges. To solve this problem, each PAD-compliant host shall
detect the receiving power of busy tones and then adjust the
transmission power of its busy tones. If the host properly
increases the transmission power of busy tones based on the
value calculated in PAD, the accumulative interference from
multiple transmitters can be prevented.
IV. P ERFORMANCE E VALUATION
In this section, we will illustrate numerical examples and
simulation results to compare the proposed PFD and PAD
schemes with IEEE 802.11 DCF. The interaction between the
performance metrics and key parameters is also investigated.
A. Numerical Results and Discussions
Without loss of generality, all mobile hosts have the same
radio transmission range with a radius r = 1 unit. In the area of
a network with S = 10 10 square units, the mobile hosts are
randomly distributed with an average host degree d. This can be
approximated as d N r2 /S, where N denotes the number of
hosts in the network. If unspecified, the performance metrics are
evaluated using a two-ray ground path-loss model with TSIR =
10 dB and k = 4. Table II shows the frequency-hopping spreadspectrum (FHSS) parameters and their normalized values with
respect to .
Fig. 6 shows the saturation throughput in terms of the probability p in IEEE 802.11 DCF, PFD, and PAD. It can be seen that
PFD and PAD outperform IEEE 802.11 DCF with either small
or large p . For example, when d = 3, the maximum throughputs of PFD and PAD are about 2.6 times of that given in IEEE
802.11 DCF. The significant performance gain can be explained
as follows: PFD and PAD employ dual busy tones to avoid
all possible collisions during data and ACK transmissions. In
contrast, the RTS/CTS handshake process in IEEE 802.11 MAC
cannot solve the hidden-terminal problem. Another observation
between PFD and PAD is that the throughput difference is very
minor when p is small. With an increasing p (higher than
102 ), the throughput in PAD still keeps a relatively large value,
whereas the throughput in PFD becomes small. This shows
that the busy tones in PAD are more effective, being able to
eliminate more collisions during the transmission of RTS and
avoid all conflicts during the transmission of CTS. Therefore,
under a heavy traffic load, PAD outperforms the other two
schemes. The comparison among Fig. 6(a)(c) also indicates
that with a fixed p , the throughput always decreases with a
larger d. This is due to the increasing collision probability with
denser hosts.

Authorized licensed use limited to: UNIVERSITY OF PLYMOUTH. Downloaded on October 11, 2009 at 02:27 from IEEE Xplore. Restrictions apply.

2974

IEEE TRANSACTIONS ON VEHICULAR TECHNOLOGY, VOL. 58, NO. 6, JULY 2009

Fig. 7.

Fig. 6. Saturation throughput. (a) d = 3. (b) d = 6. (c) d = 9.

B. Simulation Results
Next, simulation is carried out by using OPNET [21] to
evaluate the performance in a more comprehensive way. We
compare the performance of five MAC schemes, i.e., IEEE
802.11, PFD, PAD, DBTMA, and CCR [1]. In each simulation

Simulation results for the packet-collision ratio.

run, 100 hosts are randomly distributed in a network with an

average node density d = 4. The wireless channel has a 1-Mb/s
bandwidth with an FHSS transmission. The data packet flow
to each node follows a Poisson process with its arrival rate
(1 10 000).
Fig. 7 shows the packet-collision ratio in terms of the packet
arrival rate . The result indicates that the packet-collision ratio
increases with the traffic load. The comparison shows that IEEE
802.11 DCF has the highest packet-collision ratio. In the case
> 100, our PFD and PAD protocols are able to achieve a
60% lower packet-collision ratio than DBTMA. This can be
explained as follows: The busy tones in PFD and PAD are
capable of solving the hidden-terminal problem in a multihop
wireless network with a large interference range. In contrast,
the dual busy tones in DBTMA ignore the large interference
problem. The result shows that the CCR scheme keeps a low
packet-collision ratio due to its interference avoidance mechanism. Still, the PFD and PAD schemes outperform CCR in
terms of the packet-collision ratio. Moreover, as the collision
caused by RTS and the aggregate interference by simultaneous
transmissions is not avoided, PFD and PAD cannot thoroughly
eliminate the packet collision. However, with the help of the
largest blocking area, PFD has the lowest packet-collision ratio
among the four MAC schemes.
The aggregate throughput is defined as the maximal total
throughput of simultaneous transmissions in a network, which
is an important performance metric for the evaluation of the
channel throughput and spatial reuse. Fig. 8 shows the aggregate throughput in terms of . It is observed that PAD has the
highest transmission throughput, followed by PFD, DBTMA,
CCR, and IEEE 802.11 DCF. The maximal throughput
in DBTMA is only 30% that of PAD and 65% that of PFD. The
curves also show an interesting phenomenon. In PFD, PAD,
DBTMA, and CCR, the throughput increases with a greater
. However, with the increasing , the throughput in IEEE
802.11 DCF reaches the maximal throughput at = 10, and
then, it sharply decreases. This is owing to the frequent packet
collisions and backoff algorithm, which generate more failed
transmissions at each host when the traffic load becomes heavy.

Authorized licensed use limited to: UNIVERSITY OF PLYMOUTH. Downloaded on October 11, 2009 at 02:27 from IEEE Xplore. Restrictions apply.

LENG et al.: MAC PROTOCOLS FOR MULTIHOP WIRELESS NETWORKS WITH A LARGE INTERFERENCE AREA

Fig. 8.

Simulation result for the aggregate throughput.

In the case > 100, the throughput in PFD, PAD, DBTMA,

and CCR keeps stable with an even higher . It is clear that our
proposed MAC protocols, i.e., PFD and PAD, have significantly
higher transmission capacity in multihop wireless networks.

V. C ONCLUSION
This paper has proposed two MAC protocols, namely, PFD
and PAD, for multihop wireless networks covering large interference areas. PFD introduces dual busy tones with fixed
transmission power to identify the maximum possible interference range when the interference range is larger than the
transmission range. PAD uses busy tone sensing to replace the
VCS and physical channel sensing, as used in IEEE 802.11.
In PAD, the dual busy tones transmit with an adaptive power
level to exactly match the instantaneous interference range. It
is shown that PFD and PAD can efficiently avoid collisions
during data and ACK packet transmissions. PAD is able to
solve the hidden- and exposed-terminal problems. An analytical
model has been developed to derive the performance metrics
with respect to the blocking area and saturation throughput in
IEEE 802.11, PFD, and PAD schemes. Analysis and simulation
results indicate that both PFD and PAD can achieve a much
higher throughput and a lower packet-collision ratio than IEEE
802.11 DCF, CCR and DBTMA. Moreover, it is found from
the analysis and simulation that the dual busy tones of both
PFD and PAD can partially indicate the aggregate interference
introduced by simultaneous transmissions.
R EFERENCES
[1] K. Xu, M. Gerla, and S. Bae, Effectiveness of RTS/CTS handshake
in IEEE 802.11 based ad hoc networks, Ad Hoc Netw., vol. 1, no. 1,
pp. 107123, Jul. 2003.
[2] S. Xu and T. Saadawi, Does the IEEE 802.11 MAC protocol work well
in multihop wireless ad hoc networks? IEEE Commun. Mag., vol. 39, no.
6, pp. 130137, Jun. 2001.
[3] T. Rappaport, Wireless Communications: Principles and Practice.
Englewood Cliffs, NJ: PrenticeHall, 1996.

2975

[4] M. Cesana, D. Maniezzo, P. Bergamo, and M. Gerla, Interference aware

(IA) MAC: An enhancement to IEEE 802.11b DCF, in Proc. IEEE
VTCFall, 2003, vol. 5, pp. 27992803.
[5] S. Ray, D. Starobinski, and J. B. Carruthers, Performance of wireless
networks with hidden nodes: A queuing-theoretic analysis, Comput.
Commun., vol. 28, no. 10, pp. 11791192, Jun. 2005.
[6] D. Vassis and G. Kormentzas, Performance analysis of IEEE 802.11 ad
hoc networks in the presence of hidden terminals, Comput. Netw., vol. 51,
no. 9, pp. 23452352, Jun. 2007.
[7] Z. J. Hass and J. Deng, Dual busy tone multiple access (DBTMA)A
multiple access control scheme for ad hoc networks, IEEE Trans. Commun., vol. 50, no. 6, pp. 975984, Jun. 2002.
[8] X. Yang and N. Vaidya, Explicit and implicit pipelining for wireless
medium access control, in Proc. IEEE VTCFall, 2003, pp. 14271431.
[9] X. Yang and N. Vaidya, Priority scheduling in wireless ad hoc networks,
Wirel. Netw., vol. 12, no. 3, pp. 273286, Jun. 2006.
[10] Wireless LAN Medium Access Control (MAC) and Physical Layer (PHY)
Specification, IEEE Std. 802.11-2007, 2007.
[11] Y. Zang, L. Stibor, B. Walke, H.-J. Reumerman, and A. Barroso, A
novel MAC protocol for throughput sensitive applications in vehicular
environments, in Proc. IEEE VTCSpring, 2007, pp. 25802584.
[12] H. H. Chen and W. T. Tea, Performance of hierarchy schedule sensing
protocol for ad-hoc CDMA networks under multiple packet collision and
capture effect, IEEE/ACM Trans. Netw., vol. 12, no. 6, pp. 10361048,
Dec. 2004.
[13] H. H. Chen and W. T. Tea, Novel group-based spreading code protocol:
Hierarchy schedule sensing protocol for CDMA wireless networks, Proc.
Inst. Elect. Eng.Commun., vol. 146, no. 1, pp. 1521, Feb. 1999.
[14] H. H. Chen, N. C. Lim, and J. Oksman, Spreading code protocol enabling programmable complexity/performance for CDMA local wireless
networks, Proc. Inst. Elect. Eng.Commun., vol. 144, no. 6, pp. 395
401, Dec. 1997.
[15] H. Takagi and L. Kleinrock, Optimal transmission range for randomly
distributed packet radio terminals, IEEE Trans. Commun., vol. COM-32,
no. 3, pp. 246257, Mar. 1984.
[16] L. Wu and P. Varshney, Performance analysis of CSMA and BTMA protocols in multihop networks (I): Single channel case, Inf. Sci., vol. 120,
no. 14, pp. 159177, Nov. 1999.
[17] S. Leng, L. Zhang, and Y. Chen, IEEE 802.11 MAC protocol enhanced
by busy tones, in Proc. IEEE ICC, 2005, pp. 29692973.
[18] S. Leng, Protocol design and performance analysis for mobile ad hoc
networks, Ph.D. dissertation, Nanyang Technol. Univ., Singapore, 2004.
[19] J. Eshet and B. Liang, Randomly ranked mini slots for fair and efficient
medium access control in ad hoc networks, IEEE Trans. Mobile Comput.,
vol. 6, no. 5, pp. 433445, May 2007.
[20] M. Chen, G. Zhu, and G. Liu, A highly efficient medium access protocol in shared wireless medium networks, in Proc. IEEE ISCC, 2007,
pp. 563568.
[21] [Online].
Available:
http://www.opnet.com/solutions/network_rd/
modeler.html

Supeng Leng (S01M06) received the B.Eng. degree from the University of Electronic Science and
Technology of China (UESTC), Chengdu, China, in
1996 and the Ph.D. degree from Nanyang Technological University (NTU), Singapore, in 2005.
He is an Associate Professor with the National
Communication Laboratory, UESTC. He has experience as an R&D Engineer in the field of computer
communications and as a Research Fellow with the
Network Technology Research Center, NTU. His
research focuses on ad hoc/sensor networks, wireless
mesh networks, ultrawideband networks, and cognitive radio networks.

Authorized licensed use limited to: UNIVERSITY OF PLYMOUTH. Downloaded on October 11, 2009 at 02:27 from IEEE Xplore. Restrictions apply.

2976

IEEE TRANSACTIONS ON VEHICULAR TECHNOLOGY, VOL. 58, NO. 6, JULY 2009

Yan Zhang (M04) received the Ph.D. degree from

Nanyang Technological University, Singapore.
Since August 2006, he has been with Simula
Research Laboratory, Lysaker, Norway. He currently
serves as the Book Series Editor for the book series
on Wireless Networks and Mobile Communications (Auerbach (part of the Taylor and Francis
Group), Boca Raton, FL). His research interests include resource, mobility, spectrum, and energy management in wireless networks.
Dr. Zhang served as the Program Cochair for the
2007 IEEE International Symposium on Pervasive Computing and Ad Hoc
Communications (IEEE PCAC), the 2007 Publicity Cochair for the International Conference on Ubiquitous Intelligence and Computing (UIC-07), the
Publication Chair for the 2007 IEEE International Symposium on Wireless
Communication Systems (ISWCS), the Program Vice Cochair for the 2007
IEEE International Symposium on Multimedia (ISM), the Program Cochair for
UIC-08, the Industrial Cochair for the 2008 International Symposium on Mobile Ad Hoc Networking and Computing (MobiHoc), the Symposium Cochair
for the 2008 International Conference on Communications and Networking in
China (ChinaCom), the Program Cochair for the 2009 International Conference
on Broadband Communications, Networks, and Systems (BROADNETS), and
the Program Cochair for the 2009 International Wireless Communications and
Mobile Computing Conference (IWCMC).

Hsiao-Hwa Chen (S89M91SM01) received the

B.Sc. and M.Sc. degrees from Zhejiang University, Hangzhou, China, in 1982 and 1985, respectively, and the Ph.D. degree from the University of
Oulu, Oulu, Finland, in 1991.
He is currently a Full Professor with the Department of Engineering Science, National Cheng
Kung University, Tainan, Taiwan. He has authored
or coauthored more than 250 technical papers in
major international journals and conferences, five
books, and three book chapters in the areas of
communications.
Dr. Chen has served as the General Chair, Technical Program Committee
Chair, and Symposium Chair for many international conferences. He served
or is serving as the Editor and/or Guest Editor for numerous technical journals.
He is the founding Editor-in-Chief of Wileys Security and Communication Networks journal (http://www.interscience.wiley.com/journal/security). He was the
recipient of the Best Paper Award at the 2008 IEEE Wireless Communications
and Networking Conference (WCNC).

Jie Xiang received the B.Eng. degree in communication engineering from Wuhan University, Wuhan,
China, and the M.Eng. degree in communication
and information systems from Huazhong University of Science and Technology, Wuhan. He is
currently working toward the Ph.D. degree with
the Simula School of Research and Innovation,
Lysaker, Norway, and the University of Oslo, Oslo,
Norway.
His current research focuses on radio resource
management, dynamic spectrum access schemes,
and networking in cognitive radio wireless networks.

Mohsen Guizani (S87M90SM98) received the

B.Sc. (with distinction) and M.S. degrees in electrical engineering and the M.Sc. and Ph.D. degrees
in computer engineering from Syracuse University,
Syracuse, NY, in 1984, 1986, 1987, and 1990,
respectively.
He is currently a Professor and the Chair of
the Department of Computer Science, Western
Michigan University, Kalamazoo. He currently
serves as the Editor-in-Chief of the journal
Wireless Communications and Mobile Computing
(Wiley) (http://www.interscience.wiley.com/jpages/1530-8669/) and the
Journal of Computer Systems, Networks and Communications (http://www.
hindawi.com/journals/) (Hindawi). He is the author of six books and more than
180 publications in refereed journals and conferences.
Dr. Guizani is the Founder and General Chair of the IEEE International
Conference on Wireless Networks, Communications, and Mobile Computing
(IEEE 2005, 2006, and 2007 WirelessCom). He is the Chair of the IEEE
Communications Society Technical Committee on Transmissions, Access, and
Optical Systems (TAOS) and the Vice Chair of the IEEE Communications
Society Technical Committee on Personal Communications (TCPC).

Authorized licensed use limited to: UNIVERSITY OF PLYMOUTH. Downloaded on October 11, 2009 at 02:27 from IEEE Xplore. Restrictions apply.