Reuse efficiency of wireless access networks under physical carrier sense: A Markovian analysis

The setting of the physical carrier sense is critical in wireless networks, since it often has to account for contrasting objectives like limiting the overall interference while ensuring high concurrency among wireless transmissions. This paper proposes an analytical approach for evaluating the impact of carrier sense setting on the throughput efficiency of wireless access networks. A time continuous Markov chain is used to describe the system, and to further gathering performance measures in terms of throughput and collision probability. Numerical results obtained through the model and further validated against simulations are used to derive qualitative dimensioning criteria for the carrier sense under different network conditions.

Research highlights
► Several wireless access systems resort to physical carrier sensing.
► The setting of the physical carrier sensing impacts the wireless access system.
► A Markovian analytical framework is proposed to evaluate the physical carrier sensing.
► The proposed model is used to dimension/optimize the carrier sensing parameters.
► The proposed model is validated against simulation.