COMSATS Virtual Campus

Islamabad

CSC 339 Computer Communication & Networks

CSMA with Collision Avoidance

We have observed that CSMA/CD would break down in wireless networks because of hidden
node and exposed nodes problems. We will have a quick recap of these two problems through
examples.

Hidden Node Problem

In the case of wireless network it is possible that A is sending a message to B, but C is out of its
range and hence while "listening" on the network it will find the network to be free and might try
to send packets to B at the same time as A. So, there will be a collision at B. The problem can be
looked upon as if A and C are hidden from each other. Hence it is called the "hidden node
problem".

Exposed Node Problem

If C is transmitting a message to D and B wants to transmit a message to A, B will find the

network to be busy as B hears C trnasmitting. Even if B would have transmitted to A, it would
not have been a problem at A or D. CSMA/CD would not allow it to transmit message to A,
while the two transmissions could have gone in parallel.

Addressing hidden node problem (CSMA/CA)

Consider the figure above.Suppose A wants to send a packet to B. Then it will first send a small
packet to B called "Request to Send" (RTS). In response, B sends a small packet to A called
"Clear to Send" (CTS). Only after A receives a CTS, it transmits the actual data. Now, any of
the nodes which can hear either CTS or RTS assume the network to be busy. Hence even if some

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other node which is out of range of both A and B sends an RTS to C (which can hear at least one
of the RTS or CTS between A and B), C would not send a CTS to it and hence the
communication would not be established between C and D.

One issue that needs to be addressed is how long the rest of the nodes should wait before they
can transmit data over the network. The answer is that the RTS and CTS would carry some
information about the size of the data that B intends to transfer. So, they can calculate time that
would be required for the transmission to be over and assume the network to be free after
that.Another interesting issue is what a node should do if it hears RTS but not a corresponding
CTS. One possibility is that it assumes the recipient node has not responded and hence no
transmission is going on, but there is a catch in this. It is possible that the node hearing RTS is
just on the boundary of the node sending CTS. Hence, it does hear CTS but the signal is so
deteriorated that it fails to recognize it as a CTS. Hence to be on the safer side, a node will not
start transmission if it hears either of an RTS or a CTS.

The assumption made in this whole discussion is that if a node X can send packets to a node Y, it
can also receive a packet from Y, which is a fair enough assumption given the fact that we are
talking of a local network where standard instruments would be used. If that is not the case
additional complexities would get introduced in the system.

Does CSMA/CD work universally in the wired networks ?

The problem of range is there in wired networks as well in the form of deterioration of signals.
Normally to counter this, we use repeaters, which can regenerate the original signal from a
deteriorated one. But does that mean that we can build as long networks as we want with
repeaters. The answer, unfortunately, is NO! The reason is the beyond a certain length
CSMA/CD will break down.

The mechanism of collision detection which CSMA/CD follows is through listening while
talking. What this means is so long as a node is transmitting the packet, it is listening on the
cable. If the data it listens to is different from the data it is transmitting it assumes a collision.
Once it has stopped transmitting the packet, and has not detected collision while transmission
was going on, it assumes that the transmission was successful. The problem arises when the
distance between the two nodes is too large. Suppose A wants to transmit some packet to B
which is at a very large distance from B. Data can travel on cable only at a finite speed (usually
2/3c, c being the speed of light). So, it is possible that the packet has been transmitted by A onto
the cable but the first bit of the packet has not yet reached B. In that case, if a collision occurs, A
would be unaware of it occurring. Therefore there is problem in too long a network.

Let us try to parametrize the above problem. Suppose "t" is the time taken for the node A to
transmit the packet on the cable and "T" is the time , the packet takes to reach from A to B.
Suppose transmission at A starts at time t0. In the worst case the collision takes place just when
the first packet is to reach B. Say it is at t0+T-e (e being very small). Then the collision
information will take T-e time to propagate back to A. So, at t0+2(T-e) A should still be
transmitting. Hence, for the correct detection of collision (ignoring e)

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t > 2T

t increases with the number of bits to be transferred and decreases with the rate of transfer (bits
per second). T increases with the distance between the nodes and decreases with the speed of the
signal (usually 2/3c). We need to either keep t large enough or T as small. We do not want to live
with lower rate of bit transfer and hence slow networks. We can not do anything about the speed
of the signal. So what we can rely on is the minimum size of the packet and the distance between
the two nodes. Therefore, we fix some minimum size of the packet and if the size is smaller than
that, we put in some extra bits to make it reach the minimum size. Accordingly we fix the
maximum distance between the nodes. Here too, there is a tradeoff to be made. We do not want
the minimum size of the packets to be too large since that wastes lots of resources on cable. At
the same time we do not want the distance between the nodes to be too small. Typical minimum
packet size is 64 bytes and the corresponding distance is 2-5 kilometers.

Collision Free Protocols

Although collisions do not occur with CSMA/CD once a station has unambigously seized the
channel, they can still occur during the contention period. These collisions adversely affect the
efficiency of transmission. Hence some protocols have been developed which are contention
free.

Bit-Map Method

In this method, there N slots. If node 0 has a frame to send, it transmit a 1 bit during the first slot.
No other node is allowed to transmit during this period. Next node 1 gets a chance to transmit 1
bit if it has something to send, regardless of what node 0 had transmitted. This is done for all the
nodes. In general node j may declare the fact that it has a frsme to send by inserting a 1 into slot
j. Hence after all nodes have passed, each node has complete knowledge of who wants to send a
frame. Now they begin transmitting in numerical order. Since everyone knows who is
transmitting and when, there could never be any collision.

The basic problem with this protocol is its inefficiency during low load. If a node has to transmit
and no other node needs to do so, even then it has to wait for the bitmap to finish. Hence the
bitmap will be repeated over and over again if very few nodes want to send wasting valuable
bandwidth.

Binary Countdown

In this protocol, a node which wants to signal that it has a frame to send does so by writing its
address into the header as a binary number. The arbitration is such that as soon as a node sees
that a higher bit position that is 0 in its address has been overwritten with a 1, it gives up. The
final result is the address of the node which is allowed to send. After the node has transmitted the
whole process is repeated all over again. Given below is an example situation.
Nodes Addresses
A 0010

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 B 0101
C 1010
D 1001
----
1010
Node C having higher priority gets to transmit. The problem with this protocol is that the nodes
with higher address always wins. Hence this creates a priority which is highly unfair and hence
undesirable.

Limited Contention Protocols

Both the type of protocols described above - Contention based and Contention - free has their
own problems. Under conditions of light load, contention is preferable due to its low delay. As
the load increases, contention becomes increasingly less attractive, because the overload
associated with channel arbitration becomes greater. Just the reverse is true for contention - free
protocols. At low load, they have high delay, but as the load increases , the channel efficiency
improves rather than getting worse as it does for contention protocols.

Obviously it would be better if one could combine the best properties of the contention and
contention - free protocols, that is, protocol which used contention at low loads to provide low
delay, but used a cotention-free technique at high load to provide good channel efficiency. Such
protocols do exist and are called Limited contention protocols.

It is obvious that the probablity of some station aquiring the channel could only be increased by
decreasing the amount of competition. The limited contention protocols do exactly that. They
first divide the stations up into ( not necessarily disjoint ) groups. Only the members of group 0
are permitted to compete for slot 0. The competition for aquiring the slot within a group is
contention based. If one of the members of that group succeeds, it aquires the channel and
transmits a frame. If there is collision or no node of a particular group wants to send then the
members of the next group compete for the next slot. The probablity of a particular node is set to
a particular value ( optimum ).

Adaptive Tree Walk Protocol

The following is the method of adaptive tree protocol. Initially all the nodes are allowed to try to
aquire the channel. If it is able to aquire the channel, it sends its frame. If there is collision then
the nodes are divided into two equal groups and only one of these groups compete for slot 1. If
one of its member aquires the channel then the next slot is reserved for the other group. On the
other hand, if there is a collision then that group is again subdivided and the same process is
followed. This can be better understood if the nodes are thought of as being organised in a binary
tree as shown in the following figure.

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Many improvements could be made to the algorithm. For example, consider the case of nodes G
and H being the only ones wanting to transmit. At slot 1 a collision will be detected and so 2 will
be tried and it will be found to be idle. Hence it is pointless to probe 3 and one should directly go
to 6,7.

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