Exploit concurrent transmissions through discernible interference cancellation

This paper represents the design, feasibility evaluation and performance validation of ICMR, a novel cross layer protocol that can maximize concurrent transmissions and avoid data frame interference in wireless networks, achieving higher throughput comparing with the 802.11 standard and other state-of-the-art protocols. Observations on the 802.11 standard reveal that nodes degrade the network throughput from two aspects, including the so-called CF-CA problem and varied-IR problem, and these problems will make nodes around both the transmitter and receiver of the ongoing link waste concurrent transmission opportunities. A state-of-the-art protocol IRMA is proposed to improve the network throughput through solving the two problems at the transmitter side. In this paper, a new ICMR protocol is proposed to solve both problems at the receiver side to further improve the network throughput through discernible interference cancellation, a physical layer mechanism that can successfully detect data frames when collided by control frames. Hardware experiments based on USRP2 demonstrate the feasibility of the discernible interference cancellation mechanism, and simulations based on ns-2 confirm that ICMR outperforms the 802.11 standard and other protocols significantly.