Hidden Nodes Avoidance in Wireless Sensor

Networks
Abdelmalik Bachir and Dominique Barthel

Martin Heusse and Andrzej Duda

France Telecom R&D

Meylan, France
{Abdelmalik.Bachir, Dominique.Barthel}@francetelecom.com

LSR-IMAG Laboratory
Grenoble, France
{Martin.Heusse, Andrzej.Duda}@imag.fr

Abstract We propose a new access method for wireless multihop sensor networks. It reduces collisions due to hidden nodes,
a source of significant energy dissipation. Our access method
operates similarly to SMAC by alternating sleeping and active
periods, but it does not use RTS/CTS. Instead, it adjusts the
contention window so that the probability of collisions due to
hidden nodes becomes negligible. We analyze the hidden node
problem to derive expressions for the number of hidden nodes
and the probability of collisions. We show the numerical results
for different low power radios and validate our access method
through simulation.

I. I NTRODUCTION
We consider wireless sensor networks composed of a large
number of battery operated nodes. Nodes share a common
radio channel and are organized as a multi-hop network
communication between nodes requires relaying packets by
intermediate nodes. The medium access control (MAC) sets
up rules for using the common channel. The first goal of a
good MAC protocol is the energy efficiency, because sensor
networks should be long-lived without battery recharge or
replacement. Performance indices like throughput, delay, and
fairness are much less important since sensor networks usually
support only one application with limited communication
requirements.
Radio communication is one of the main sources of energy
dissipation because of: idle listening, frame collisions, traffic
overhearing, and control packet overhead [1], [2]. We follow
the same approach to reduce energy consumption in idle
listening as SMAC [1], which defines sleeping and active
periods. The radio transceiver is switched on only during an
active period. SMAC manages contention between nodes in a
similar way to the IEEE 802.11 DCF [3].
The second source of energy dissipation, namely frame
collisions, arises in CSMA-based access methods. Although
there exists collision-free access methods such as schedulebased TDMA or FDMA, CSMA-based methods are the most
widely used techniques for multi-hop wireless networks, because of their simplicity and ability to work in a decentralized
environment. We can cite SMAC [1] and WiseMAC [4] as
examples of such access methods.
A wireless multi-hop sensor network should be dense to
ensure that all nodes can communicate with each other via
intermediate nodes. When a CSMA-based method is used
in such a network, collisions may happen when a receiver

is within the transmission range of two transmitters that

are transmitting simultaneously so that the receiver captures
neither frame. As each collision represents unnecessary energy
dissipation, reducing collisions should be the main design
objective of a CSMA-based access method. There are two
main reasons for collisions: two nodes choose the same slot
in a contention window or the hidden node problem [5] (a
hidden node may corrupt a frame being transmitted, because
it does not receive the signal of the transmitter). A significant
part of collisions is due to this last problem.
In this paper, we propose a new access method that reduces
collisions due to hidden nodes. It is similar to SMAC, but
uses a different approach to avoid collisions caused by hidden
nodes. We analyze the hidden nodes problem and show that
it is possible to reduce the probability of collisions by setting
correctly the contention window.
II. R ELATED WORK
Several authors dealt with the problem of hidden nodes,
however there is no satisfactory solution that does not rely
on out of band channels: BTMA (Busy Tone Multiple Access) provides a solution in a centralized system with a
base station [5], whereas DBTMA (Dual Busy Tone Multiple
Access) offers a distributed solution for ad hoc networks [6].
Other solutions such as RTS/CTS proposed in MACA [7]
only alleviates the problem by degenerating to ALOHA when
hidden terminals are present [6].
The hidden nodes problem in wireless multi-hop sensor networks was mainly addressed with two techniques:
RTS/CTS [1] and Carrier Sense Tuning [4], [8].
RTS/CTS was basically designed to reduce the number of
collisions due to hidden nodes by reserving the channel around
both the sender and the receiver to protect frame transmission
from being corrupted by hidden nodes. However, this method
presents several problems when used in wireless multi-hop
sensor networks:

the energy consumption related to a RTS/CTS exchange

is significant,
as data frames are usually small, the collision probability
is the same for data frames as for RTS/CTS, so it does
not make any difference if the technique is used or not,
it does not avoid collisions in multi-hop networks [9],

it may lower the network capacity due to the exposed

node problem,
it cannot be used for broadcast frames.

defer

Several MAC protocols have proposed to use Carrier Sense

Tuning to cope with the hidden node problem [4], [8]. The
key idea comes from the observation that hidden nodes cause
collisions, because their radio carrier sense range is not large
enough to sense on going transmissions they may collide
with. Hence, a node should tune its radio carrier sense range
to make sure that when it transmits, there is no another
transmission. Although this method allows a node to detect
ongoing transmissions, it is not suitable for all situations.
For example, it assumes a homogeneous radio channel for
all nodes, which is not always possible because of obstacles,
different antenna height, etc. Even if the channel is homogeneous, it is not possible to increase the carrier sense range of
radio transceivers indefinitely due to physical limitations.

sucessful
transmission

on-going
transmission

Fig. 1.

Large slots allow channel sensing before transmission.

A

Transmission duration

A
X
1 slot

Fig. 2.

Collision in the case of a long slot.

III. MAC ACCESS M ETHOD

IV. A NALYSIS OF THE H IDDEN N ODES P ROBLEM

We assume that our access method operates similarly to

SMAC by alternating sleeping and active periods. It is not
required for nodes to be synchronized. When a node wakes
up and has a frame to send, it chooses a backoff b, an integer
distributed uniformly in the contention window [0, CW [ and
waits for b time slots before attempting to transmit. The node
decrements the counter each time it senses the medium free
for a duration of a slot time. When the counter expires, the
node sends a frame. We consider two different definitions of
a slot:

We consider a sensor network in which node A wants to

transmit a frame to node B (cf. Figure 3). We assume the
following propagation model:

a slot can be short, as in 802.11, corresponding to

the minimum time required for CCA (Clear Channel
Assessment) to sense the channel state (idle or busy).
This time takes into account the propagation delay, the
delay for switching from reception to transmission, and
channel sensing itself. When a node starts to transmit at
a given slot, any other node that has chosen a different
slot will learn about the transmission and defer.
a slot can be long, for example up to the duration of a
maximum sized frame or even twice this duration. A node
performs CCA at the beginning of a slot (cf. Figure 1)
and defer if the slot is sensed busy, otherwise it transmits
its frame. When nodes are not synchronized, if the slot is
twice the transmission time, they may collide only if they
choose the same backoff interval (cf. Figure 2). With such
a long slot, we make the effect of hidden nodes equivalent
to the one of visible nodes in the short slot case, because
a collision occurs only if a hidden node transmits at the
same slot as the current transmission.

In the rest of the paper, we will analyze the hidden node

problem so that for a given density of the sensor network we
will be able to estimate the probability of collisions due to
hidden nodes. Then, we set the contention window CW so
that the probability of collisions due to hidden nodes becomes
negligible.

Prx (B) =

Ptx (A)
d(A, B)

(1)

This generic expression covers in fact two common models:

Free Space
Two Ray Ground Reflection
1
(4)2
=
2 2
2
G
G
Gt G r
t r Ht Hr
=4
=2
where Gt (Gr ) is the antenna gain at the transmitter (resp.
at the receiver) and Ht (Hr ) is the antenna height at the
transmitter and (resp. at the receiver).
We define the following sets of nodes:
Ntx (A): the set of nodes able to detect transmissions of
node A:
=

Ntx (A) = {x|d(x, A) E},

where E is the transmission range defined as:
s
Ptx (A)
E=
.
T RCS

(2)

(3)

The nodes are inside the dotted circle in Figure 3.

Nrx (A): the set of nodes able to correctly receive frames
sent by A in the absence of interference:
Nrx (A) = {x|d(x, A) R},
where R is the reception range defined as:
s
Ptx (A)
R=
.
T RRX

(4)

(5)

A node outside this set cannot correctly decode the

frames because of insufficient signal strength. This set
is delimited by the dashed circle in Figure 3.

TABLE I
N OTATION
d(x, y)
Ptx (x)
Prx (x)

E
R
I(r)
T RCS
T RRX
T RCP

A hidden node may corrupt a frame sent by A to B,

because it does not receive the signal of A, so its
transmission will result in a collision.
Let us denote by nh (r) the number of hidden nodes (resp.
nv (r) the number of visible nodes). If we assume that nodes
are distributed over a surface with a homogeneous density D
(number of nodes per m2 ), nh (r) is proportional to the area
of the zone in which hidden nodes may appear.
Let S(r) be the common area of the zones corresponding
to Ntx (A) and Ni (A, B). The
E and I(r)
circles of radius
intersect at two points: (u, E 2 u2 ) and (u, E 2 u2 ),
2
2
2
where u = E +r 2rI(r) . Thus,

FOR THE ANALYSIS

distance between nodes x and y

Transmission power of node x (Watt)
Received power at node x (Watt)
Wavelength (m)
Channel gain, assumed constant (m )
Path loss exponent
Signal detection range
Signal reception range
Signal interference range
Carrier sense threshold (Watt)
Reception threshold (sensitivity) (Watt)
Threshold of capture ratio

S1

S2

S(r) = 2 [S1 (r) + S2 (r)],

Hidden nodes
area

where

R
E



p
sin 2a2
2 a2
2
2
I(r) t dt = I(r)
S1 (r) =
+
,
2
4
I(r)+r
Z

I(r)

r
A (0,0)

(12)

E2

S2 (r) =

t2 dt

=E


a3
sin 2a3
+
,
2
4

(13)

u
where a2 = arccos ur
I(r) and a3 = arccos E . Finally, we obtain
the following results.

Proposition 1: The number of hidden nodes is:

Fig. 3.

Transmission, reception, and interference ranges.

Ni (A, B): the set of nodes that may interfere with a

transmission and corrupt a frame sent by A to B (r =
d(A, B)):
Ni (A, B) = {x|d(x, A) I(r)},

0
[I(r)2 E 2 ] D
nh (r) =

[ I(r)2 S(r)] D

(14)

Proposition 2: The number of visible nodes is:

(6)

where I(r) is the interference range. As a frame may be

corrupted if

if E I(r) + r,
if E I(r) r,
otherwise

nv (r) = I(r)2 D nh (r).

(15)

A. Numerical results for Bluetooth, ZigBee, WaveLAN

1.4e+007

< T RCP

(7)

and
d(x, A) r

T RCP ,

the interference range is the following:

p
I(r) = r T RCP .

(8)

ZigBee
Bluetooth
WaveLAN

1.2e+007

Hidden Nodes Area (m*m)

Ptx (A)
r
Ptx (A)
d(x,A)

1e+007

8e+006

6e+006

4e+006

2e+006

(9)

0
0

200

400

600

800

1000

r - Distance between A and B (m)

Note that the cardinality of this set depends on the

distance between A and B.
Nv (A, B): the set of nodes for which A is visible:
Nv (A, B) = Ntx (A, B) Ni (A, B)

(10)

A visible node may corrupt a frame sent by A to B,

but before transmitting its frame, the node will sense the
carrier and defer until the end of the current transmission.
Nh (A, B): the set of nodes for which A is hidden:
Nh (A, B) = Ni (A, B)\Nv (A, B)

(11)

Fig. 4.

Hidden nodes area, Free Space model

We consider three radio technologies: Bluetooth, ZigBee

(IEEE 802.15.4), and WaveLAN (IEEE 802.11). Table II
presents their parameters that come from the specifications
of industrial products or IEEE standards. 1
1 for T R
RX , the IEEE 802.15.4 standard recommends the value of -85dBm,
whereas the ZigBee compatible Freescale MC13192 transceiver uses -92dBm.
For 802.11, we use the values encoded in ns2 corresponding to the physical
specifications of 914MHz Lucent WaveLAN DSSS. We theoretically calculate
the carrier sense threshold T RCS for the ZigBee and Bluetooth radios.

TABLE II
R ADIO PARAMETERS
Bluetooth (802.15.1)
0 dBm
-80 dBm
11 dB
-102 dBm
0.1 m or 1.5 m

Ptx
T RRX
T RCP
T RCS
Antenna height: Ht = Hr

10000

Hidden Nodes Area (m*m)

WaveLAN 914 MHz (802.11)

24.5 dBm
-64.4 dBm
10 dB
-78 dBm
0.1 m or 1.5 m

sions. Once we have quantified the problem by deriving the

number of hidden nodes, we can consider various solutions
for avoiding this limitation. We consider below an existing
approachthe Carrier Sense Tuning [4], [8], and propose
another solution.

Zigbee
Bluetooth
WaveLAN

1000

100

A. Carrier Sense Tuning

10

1
5

10

15

20

r - Distance between A and B (m)

Fig. 5. Hidden nodes area, Two Ray Ground Reflection model, antenna
height 0.1m.
1e+006
Zigbee
Bluetooth
WaveLAN

Hidden Nodes Area (m*m)

ZigBee (802.15.4)
0 dBm
-92 dBm
10 dB
-99 dBm
0.1 m or 1.5

In this approach, the carrier sense threshold T RCS is

tunable. This means that the signal detection range (Eq. 2)
becomes E(T RCS ). We can analyze the area of the hidden
nodes zone for different values of T RCS .
There will be no collisions due to hidden nodes, if the area
of the hidden nodes zone becomes null, i.e. when E(T RCS )
I(r) + r, r being the distance between the sender A and the
receiver B. We thus have:
s

100000

p
Ptx (A)
= r T RCP + r
T RCS (r)

(16)

Ptx (A)

r T RCP + r

(17)

10000

Then,
1000

T RCS (r) =
100
0

50

100

150

200

250

300

r - Distance between A and B (m)

Fig. 6. Hidden nodes area, Two Ray Ground Reflection model, antenna
height 1.5m.

The antenna gain for transmission and reception is the same

for all nodes and fixed to 1 (Gr = Gt = 1).
Figure 4 shows the area that contains hidden nodes in
function of the distance between the sender and the receiver for
the Free Space model. Even if this model is purely theoretical,
we can observe that there are no hidden nodes for Bluetooth
and WaveLAN. ZigBee presents an important hidden nodes
area for the distance range between 500m and 1000m.
Figures 5 and 6 show the hidden nodes area when assuming
the Two Ray Ground Reflection model. The scale is logarithmic (the linear scale of the previous figure was needed to show
the zero area for Bluetooth and WaveLAN). There are hidden
nodes areas only for WaveLAN and ZigBee whereas they are
absent for Bluetooth.
V. AVOIDING H IDDEN N ODES P ROBLEM
Hidden nodes may limit the performance of multi-hop
sensor networks, because their transmissions result in colli-

If we set r to the maximum reception range R, there will

be no hidden nodes. Although this prevents collisions due
to hidden nodes, it forces nodes to behave in a conservative
waymany transmissions may be delayed because a receiver
will often detect the carrier due to the large radio carrier sense
range. In addition to that, increasing the carrier sense range
may be not possible for physical reasons. Another problem
with Carrier Sense Tuning is the presence of physical obstacles
between nodes. In this case, increasing the radio carrier sense
range does not solve the problem of hidden nodes.
B. Adjusting Contention Window
In this section, we propose a solution to the hidden nodes
problem based on adjusting the contention window.
As the access method during active periods basically behaves as the 802.11 DCF, the probability that a node transmits
in a slot is given by [10]:
2
(18)
CW + 1
This expression is based on the following assumptions:
nodes are greedy, i.e. nodes have always frames to send
during the active period,
=

pc = 1 PH PV = 1 (1 )nh (r)+nv (r)ps ,

which can be represented as:

n (r)+nv (r)ps
CW 1 h
= 1 pc ,
CW + 1

(19)

(20)

and finally we obtain:

1+
CW (r) =
1

1 pc

.
nh (r)+nv (r)ps
1 pc
nh (r)+nv (r)ps

(21)

We could use this expression to dynamically adjust CW

so that collision probability pc stays under a given value.
However, notice that the contention window CW depends on
r, the distance between the sender and the receiverapplying
this result for controlling CW is quite difficult, because all
the nodes in the network should know the distance between
nodes willing to communicate. To avoid this problem, we can
use a static value of CW by taking r = R, which corresponds
to the worst case when the distance between nodes is equal
2 it is only decremented once when the channel is sensed busy (which is
not the case in 802.11, in fact).
3 This mechanism marginally extends the backoff between transmissions,
but we neglect its impact on the transmission probability used bellow.

to the signal reception range R. In this case, the contention

window becomes:

1 + n 1 pc

CW (R) =
,
(22)
1 n 1 pc
where n = nh (R) + nv (R) ps .
5000
Zigbee
4500
4000
3500
3000

CW

there is no exponential backoff,

nodes do not decrement their contention counter when
the channel is not idle2 .
The first assumption is justified if we consider that in many
sensor network applications, communications tend to synchronize the network, e.g. sensors decide to send their data at
the same time such as during the route request operation or
gathering sensor information.
Then, we may compute probability pc that a transmission
attempt in a given slot ends up as a collision involving either
a visible node or a hidden node. We consider that each slot is
composed of two phases (which is different from the standard
802.11 DCF): a node first performs CCA of duration tCCA
to sense the channel state and then transmits if the channel is
free. Only the visible nodes that start their slots at the same
instant as the transmission may cause a collision: it can be
seen from Figure 1 that only if stations X and A perform
CCA at the same instant, they will both observe the channel
free and eventually collide3 . We call ps the fraction of the
visible nodes that may cause a collision. Assuming that the
nodes have independently distributed time references and that
a transmission needs to last the entire tCCA interval for a
CCA
.
station to detect an ongoing transmission, ps = 2 ttSLOT
A transmission is successful if:
1) no node, among nv (r) nodes, transmits in the same slot.
This implies that it did not overhear the transmission in
the channel assessment phase. PV = (1 )nv (r)ps .
2) no node, among nh (r) nodes, transmits in the same slot.
PH = (1 )nh (r)
Thus pc is the probability that, in a time slot, at least one
of the visible and hidden nodes (relatively to the transmitting
node), transmits. That is:

2500
2000
1500
1000
500
0
0.1

0.2

0.3

0.4

0.5

0.6

0.7

0.8

0.9

Collision probability

Fig. 7.

Contention Window in function of collision probability for ZigBee.

Figure 7 shows the required value of CW to obtain a given

collision probability (ZigBee radio parameters).
VI. S IMULATIONS
We have used ns2 to evaluate the performance of the
proposed method for avoiding the hidden nodes problem: we
compare Adjusting Contention Window with Carrier Sense
Tuning. We have set up the following simulation experiment:
30 nodes are uniformly distributed in a 40mx40m square,
we use the parameters of the Freescales MC13192 radio
transceiver with a bandwidth of 250Kbps and a radio
transmission range of about 20m (resulting from the Two
Ray Ground propagation model with antenna height of
0.1m),
we randomly pick two nodes, a source and a destination,
and make sure that they are not reachable in one hop,
the source node broadcasts 50 frames of 60 bytes at a
constant bit rate (the inter-frame interval is set to 2ms),
each node re-broadcasts only once the frame it receives,
we use the MAC protocol described in Section III with
two different values of a slot (32s and 3840s, twice
the transmission of a maximum sized frame),
we set three different values for the carrier sense threshold: T RCS (0.5R), T RCS (0.7R), and T RCS (R), which
correspond to CS = 0.5, 0.7 and 1 according to (Eq. 17)
each point in the figures represents the average of 10
values.
We can distinguish two types of collisions: those due to
contention when a visible node tries to access the channel
during the same slot and collisions due to hidden nodes. A
collision with a hidden node occurs if the distance between
two transmitters is larger that the signal transmission range,
otherwise it is a collision due to channel contention.
Figures 8 and 9 show the observed collision probability due
to hidden nodes. We can notice that it strongly depends on the

0.2

0.2
CS = 0.5
CS = 0.7
CS = 1.0

CS = 0.5
CS = 0.7
CS = 1.0

0.15

Collision Probability

Collision Probability

0.15

0.1

0.05

0.1

0.05

0
0

50

100

150

200

250

300

350

Contention Window Size

100

150

200

250

300

350

Contention Window Size

Collision probability due to hidden nodes, slot of 32 s.

Fig. 8.

50

Fig. 10.

Collision probability due to contention.

0.2
CS = 0.5
CS = 0.7
CS = 1.0

Collision Probability

0.15

0.1

0.05

0
0

50

100

150

200

250

300

350

Contention Window Size

Fig. 9.

Collision probability due to hidden nodes, slot of 3840 s.

carrier sense rangethe case CS = 1 (T RCS (R)) shows that

Carrier Sense Tuning eliminates collisions caused by hidden
nodes. However, as previously stated, such increase of the
carrier sense range may be not possible or not effective due
to obstacles. A reasonable value of the carrier sense threshold
corresponds to CS = 0.5 (T RCS (0.5R)), for which we can
see that the collision probability decreases with the increase
of the contention window. If we choose a threshold of an
acceptable collision probability, we can find the contention
window for which the collisions will be negligible. We also
notice that the collision probability is significantly smaller
when the slot time is large (3840s).
Figure 10 show an inverse phenomenonthe collision probability due to contention increases with the radio carrier sense
range (we only show the graph for the short slot of 32 s,
the graph is almost the same for the long slot of 3840 s).
This means that even if Carrier Sense Tuning has a beneficial
effect on collisions due to hidden nodes, it increases other
collisions. We can also see that when choosing a sufficiently
large contention window, we can keep this type of collisions
acceptably low.
VII. C ONCLUSION
In this paper, we have analyzed the hidden node problem
and found expressions for the number of hidden nodes and
the probability of collisions. We have proposed to use a
sufficiently large value of the contention window to guarantee

an acceptably low collision probability due to hidden nodes:

based on the characteristics of a given sensor networks (area,
node density, antenna height etc.) we estimate the number of
hidden nodes and then fix the contention window in function of
the number of hidden nodes so that the probability of collisions
stays under some threshold. As we use the transmission range
as the worst case estimate for the collision probability, the
actual number of collisions should be even smaller. We have
simulated an example sensor network based on ZigBee radios
and shown that our access method can lower the collision
probability in the desired way.
R EFERENCES
[1] Wei Ye, John Heidemann, and Deborah Estrin, An energy-efficient
MAC protocol for wireless sensor networks, Proceedings of the IEEE
Infocom, pp. 156776, New York, NY, July 2002.
[2] T. van Dam and K. Langendoen, An Adaptive Energy-Efficient MAC
Protocol for Wireless Sensor Networks, Proceedings of the ACM
Sensys, pp. 17180, Los Angeles, CA, November 2003.
[3] L. M. S. Committee, Wireless LAN Medium Access Control (MAC) and
Physical Layer (PHY) Specifications, IEEE Computer Society ed. IEEE
Std. 802.11-1197, 1997.
[4] Enz, C.C.; El-Hoiydi, A.; Decotignie, J.; Peiris, V., WiseNET: An
Ultralow-Power Wireless Sensor Network Solution, IEEE Computer,
vol. 37, no. 8, pp. 6270, August 2004.
[5] Tobagi, F. and L. Kleinrock, Packet Switching in Radio Channels: Part
IIthe Hidden Terminal Problem in Carrier Sense Multiple-Access and
the Busy-Tone Solution, IEEE Trans. On Comm., vol. 23, no. 12, pp.
141733, December 1975.
[6] J. Deng and Z. Haas, Dual Busy Tone Multiple Access (DBTMA)a Multiple Access Control Scheme for Ad Hoc Networks, IEEE
Transactions on Communications, vol. 50, no. 6, 2002.
[7] P. Karn, MACA- a new channel access method for packet radio, in
ARRL/CRRL Amateur Radio 9th Computer Networking, pp. 13440,
1990.
[8] J. Deng, B. Liang, P. K. Varshney, Tuning the Carrier Sensing Range
of IEEE 802.11 MAC, Proceedings of the IEEE Globecom, Dallas, TX,
Nov-Dec 2004.
[9] S. Xu and T. Saadawi, Does the IEEE 802.11 MAC Protocol Work Well
in Multihop Ad Hoc Networks? IEEE Communications Magazine, pp.
130137, June 2001.
[10] G. Bianchi, Performance Analysis of the IEEE 802.11 Distributed
Coordination Function, IEEE JSAC, vol. 13, no. 3, pp. 53547, March
2000.