Analysis of a CSMA-Based Wireless Network with Heterogeneous Nodes: Feasible Throughput Region and Power Consumption

We analytically study a CSMA-based network with heterogeneous nodes in this paper. In the network, each nodes has its own throughput demand to a common base station and the MAC protocol considered is a virtual CSMA by the RTS/CTS handshake mechanism. Each node individually chooses its probability of sending a RTS packet, and the probability vector of all nodes will determine the average throughput and power consumption of each node. The set of all possible throughput demands of nodes that can be met in the network is called the feasible throughput region. We characterize the feasible throughput region and provide a upper bound of the total power consumption for any throughput demands in the feasible throughput region. Specifically, the upper bound can be achieved by one of the three points in the feasible throughput region depending on the RTS fraction when the transmitted data lengths for all nodes are equal.