4204 IEEE TRANSACTIONS ON WIRELESS COMMUNICATIONS, VOL. 11, NO. 11, NOVEMBER 2012
Combating Hidden and Exposed Terminal Problems
in Wireless Networks
Lu Wang, Student Member, IEEE, Kaishun Wu, Member, IEEE,
and Mounir Hamdi, Fellow, IEEE
Abstract—The hidden terminal problem is known to degrade
the throughput of wireless networks due to collisions, while
the exposed terminal problem results in poor performance by
wasting valuable transmission opportunities. As a result, exten-
sive research has been conducted to solve these two problems,
such as Carrier Sense Multiple Access with Collision Avoidance
(CSMA/CA). However, CSMA-like protocols cannot solve both of
these two problems at once. The fundamental reason lies in the
fact that they cannot obtain accurate Channel Usage Information
(CUI, who is transmitting or receiving nearby) with a low cost.
To obtain additional CUI in a cost-efficient way, we propose
a cross layer design, FAST (Full-duplex Attachment System).
FAST contains a PHY layer Attachment Coding,whichtransmits
control information independently on the air, without degrading
the effective throughput of the original data traffic, and a MAC
layer Attachment Sense, which utilizes the PHY layer control
information to identify the hidden and exposed nodes in real
time. We theoretically analyze the feasibility of the Attachment
Coding, and then implement it on a GNU Radio testbed consisting
of eight USRP2 nodes. We also conduct extensive simulations to
evaluate the performance of FAST, and the experimental results
show that FAST can effectively solve both the hidden and the
exposed terminal problems, and improve the average throughput
by up to 200% over CSMA in practical ad-hoc networks.
Index Terms—Interference cancelation, wireless full-duplex,
hidden terminal problem, exposed terminal problem.
I. INTRODUCTION
T
HE hidden and exposed terminal problems are two
well-known problems in Wireless Local Area Networks
(WLANs), which significantly degrade the network perfor-
mance. As shown by [1], the hidden terminal problem in-
troduces severe packet loss due to collisions for 10% of
the sender-receiver pairs. Furthermore, in [2], the author
shows that the exposed terminal problem can waste useful
concurrent transmission opportunities. Extensive research has
been carried out to solve these two problems. For example, full
duplex [3] allows a receiver to send a busy tune when receiving
a data packet. This scheme mitigates the hidden terminal
problem, but the exposed node still exists. CMAP [2] deduces
Manuscript received May 5, 2012; revised July 12 and September 4, 2012;
accepted September 5, 2012. The associate editor coordinating the review of
this paper and approving it for publication was G. Bianchi.
L. Wang and M. Hamdi are with the Department of Computer Science and
Engineering, Hong Kong University of Science and Technology, Clear Water
Bay, Kowloon, Hong Kong (e-mail: {wanglu, hamdi}@ust.hk).
K. Wu is with the HKUST Fok Ying Tung Graduate School, Hong Kong
University of Science and Technology, Hong Kong. He is also with the
National Engineering Research Center of Digital Life, State-Province Joint
Laboratory of Digital Home Interactive Applications, Sun Yat-sen University,
Guangzhou 510006, China (e-mail: kwinson@ust.hk).
Digital Object Identifier 10.1109/TWC.2012.092712.120628
the exposed node and excludes a collided transmission by
consulting a “Conflict Map”, but the hidden terminal problem
becomes even more acute. Carrier Sense Multiple Access
with Collision Avoidance (CSMA/CA) designs a handshake
mechanism called RTS/CTS [4] to mitigate both the hidden
and the exposed terminal problems. However, RTS/CTS in-
duces a rather high cost and introduces other problems like
false blocking. Therefore, RTS/CTS is disabled by default in
WLANs.
When trying to solve both the hidden and the exposed
terminal problems, a tradeoff arises between collisions (hidden
nodes) and unused capacities (exposed nodes). Carrier Sense
(CS) is the best effort to resolve this tradeoff, but the infor-
mation obtained (whether the channel is busy or not) is too
coarse. We argue that accurate Channel Usage Information
(CUI, which nodes are on transmissions or idle nearby) is
required to resolve this tradeoff. More specifically, PHY layer
techniques should be utilized to provide more information
about CUI. Then MAC layer protocol can make the right
channel access decision in the presence of hidden and exposed
nodes.
Recently, Interference Cancelation (IC) [5] [6] has become a
promising PHY layer technique to recover transmission errors
caused by interference. This technique gives us an insight
to propose a new coding scheme, Attachment Coding,to
provide extra information we require without occupying the
effective bandwidth for ongoing data transmissions. Specifi-
cally, control information is modulated into interference-like
signals called Attachments.TheseAttachments can be attached
to data transmission without reducing the decoding capacity
of the data packets, since they can be easily canceled out
at any receiver sides using Interference Cancellation. In this
way, control information can be delivered without occupying
any transmission time and bandwidth for data packets. By
transmitting Attachments independently from the data packets
on air, neighbors are able to acquire control information
whenever they need, and leverage this information to make
channel access decisions.
Attachment Coding has such attractive features to avoid
additional bandwidth for transmitting control messages. How-
ever, this paradigm is not easy to be realized. We have en-
countered the following challenges. First, since the number of
subcarriers is limited, how to efficiently modulate and encode
Attachments remains a concern. Second, at the data receiver
side , receivers should be able to decode data packets even
when Attachments are present. Last, it is also important for
listeners who want control information to acquire Attachments
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2012 IEEE