Revisit of RTS/CTS Exchange in High-Speed IEEE 802.11 Networks

IEEE 802.11 medium access control (MAC), called distributed coordination function (DCF), provides two different access modes, namely, 2-way (basic access) and 4-way (RTS/CTS) handshaking. The 4-way handshaking has been introduced in order to combat the hidden terminal phenomenon. It has been also proved that such a mechanism can be beneficial even in the absence of hidden terminals, because of the collision time reduction. We analyze the effectiveness of the RTS/CTS access mode, in current 802.11b and 802.11a networks. Since the rates employed for control frame transmissions can be much lower than the rate employed for data frames, the assumption on the basis of the 4-way handshaking introd…