Stochastic Analysis of Mean Interference for RTS/CTS Mechanism

The RTS/CTS handshake mechanism in WLAN is studied using stochastic geometry. The effect of RTS/CTS is treated as a thinning procedure for a spatially distributed point process that models the potential transceivers in a WLAN, and the resulting concurrent transmission processes are described. Exact formulas for the intensity of the concurrent transmission processes and the mean interference experienced by a typical receiver are established. The analysis yields useful results for understanding how the design parameters of RTS/CTS affect the network interference.

💡 Research Summary

The paper presents a rigorous stochastic‑geometry analysis of the RTS/CTS handshake in IEEE 802.11 WLANs, treating the mechanism as a spatial thinning operation on a point process that represents potential transceiver pairs. The authors begin by modeling the locations of potential transmitters as a homogeneous Poisson point process (PPP) with intensity λₚ on ℝ². Each transmitter is paired with a receiver at a fixed distance d and a uniformly random orientation θ, forming a marked Poisson bipolar process. Physical carrier sensing is represented by a circular exclusion region of radius R_cs centered at the transmitter, while virtual carrier sensing (the RTS/CTS exchange) creates two additional circles of radius R_tx centered at the transmitter and at the receiver. The union of these three circles defines the “exclusion zone” V₀ for a given pair.

Two thinning schemes are introduced. Type I thinning retains a pair only if no other transmitter lies inside its exclusion zone; this is a very conservative rule that removes many potential transmitters. Type II thinning assigns each pair an independent time‑stamp mark m∈