Effect of channel sensing on CSMA/CA in IEEE 802.15.4 networks

IEEE 802.15.4 employs a medium access control protocol based on carrier sense multiple access with collision avoidance (CSMA/CA). Channel sensing may have critical impact on the system throughput and energy consumption as well. In this paper, we investigate the effect of channel sensing on the CSMA/CA performance in IEEE 802.15.4 star-topology configured networks. We show that the hidden node ratio (i.e., the probability that any two child nodes cannot hear each other in a star-topology configured network) is highly associated with the target false-alarm probability of the channel sensing detector. We show that the CSMA/CA performance of IEEE 802.15.4 network can significantly be improved by adjusting the hidden node ratio.