| Abstract: | Referring to most media access control (MAC) protocols in low rate personal area networks (LR‐WPANs), there is no hidden node collision avoidance mechanism utilized. Quantitative analysis in this paper based on the IEEE 802.15.4 specification shows a high probability of the continuous hidden node collisions (CHNCs), which seriously decreases network throughput. Based on this observation, we propose a cost‐efficient recovery mechanism to achieve fast self‐healing when LR‐WPANs suffer CHNCs, while introducing no overhead when there are no collisions. Simulation results demonstrate the efficiency of our proposed protocol in terms of network throughput and power saving. Copyright © 2011 John Wiley & Sons, Ltd. |
