We have observed that CSMA/CD would break down in wireless networks because of hidden node and exposed nodes problems. We will have a quick recap of these two problems through examples.
One issue that needs to be addressed is how long the rest of the nodes should wait before they can transmit data over the network. The answer is that the RTS and CTS would carry some information about the size of the data that B intends to transfer. So, they can calculate time that would be required for the transmission to be over and assume the network to be free after that.Another interesting issue is what a node should do if it hears RTS but not a corresponding CTS. One possibility is that it assumes the recipient node has not responded and hence no transmission is going on, but there is a catch in this. It is possible that the node hearing RTS is just on the boundary of the node sending CTS. Hence, it does hear CTS but the signal is so deteriorated that it fails to recognize it as a CTS. Hence to be on the safer side, a node will not start transmission if it hears either of an RTS or a CTS.
The assumption made in this whole discussion is that if a node X can send packets to a node Y, it can also receive a packet from Y, which is a fair enough assumption given the fact that we are talking of a local network where standard instruments would be used. If that is not the case additional complexities would get introduced in the system.
The mechanism of collision detection which CSMA/CD follows is through listening while talking. What this means is so long as a node is transmitting the packet, it is listening on the cable. If the data it listens to is different from the data it is transmitting it assumes a collision. Once it has stopped transmitting the packet, and has not detected collision while transmission was going on, it assumes that the transmission was successful. The problem arises when the distance between the two nodes is too large. Suppose A wants to transmit some packet to B which is at a very large distance from B. Data can travel on cable only at a finite speed (usually 2/3c, c being the speed of light). So, it is possible that the packet has been transmitted by A onto the cable but the first bit of the packet has not yet reached B. In that case, if a collision occurs, A would be unaware of it occurring. Therefore there is problem in too long a network.
Let us try to parametrize the above problem. Suppose "t" is the time taken for the node A to transmit the packet on the cable and "T" is the time , the packet takes to reach from A to B. Suppose transmission at A starts at time t0. In the worst case the collision takes place just when the first packet is to reach B. Say it is at t0+T-e (e being very small). Then the collision information will take T-e time to propagate back to A. So, at t0+2(T-e) A should still be transmitting. Hence, for the correct detection of collision (ignoring e)
t increases with the number of bits to be transferred and decreases with the rate of transfer (bits per second). T increases with the distance between the nodes and decreases with the speed of the signal (usually 2/3c). We need to either keep t large enough or T as small. We do not want to live with lower rate of bit transfer and hence slow networks. We can not do anything about the speed of the signal. So what we can rely on is the minimum size of the packet and the distance between the two nodes. Therefore, we fix some minimum size of the packet and if the size is smaller than that, we put in some extra bits to make it reach the minimum size. Accordingly we fix the maximum distance between the nodes. Here too, there is a tradeoff to be made. We do not want the minimum size of the packets to be too large since that wastes lots of resources on cable. At the same time we do not want the distance between the nodes to be too small. Typical minimum packet size is 64 bytes and the corresponding distance is 2-5 kilometers.
The basic problem with this protocol is its inefficiency during low load. If a node has to transmit and no other node needs to do so, even then it has to wait for the bitmap to finish. Hence the bitmap will be repeated over and over again if very few nodes want to send wasting valuable bandwidth.
| Nodes | Addresses |
|---|---|
| A | 0010 |
| B | 0101 |
| C | 1010 |
| D | 1001 |
| ---- | |
| 1010 |
Obviously it would be better if one could combine the best properties of the contention and contention - free protocols, that is, protocol which used contention at low loads to provide low delay, but used a cotention-free technique at high load to provide good channel efficiency. Such protocols do exist and are called Limited contention protocols.
It is obvious that the probablity of some station aquiring the channel could only be increased by decreasing the amount of competition. The limited contention protocols do exactly that. They first divide the stations up into ( not necessarily disjoint ) groups. Only the members of group 0 are permitted to compete for slot 0. The competition for aquiring the slot within a group is contention based. If one of the members of that group succeeds, it aquires the channel and transmits a frame. If there is collision or no node of a particular group wants to send then the members of the next group compete for the next slot. The probablity of a particular node is set to a particular value ( optimum ).
