Collision Recovery Techniques for Wireless Lans

Collisions in wireless networks are a significant source of packet loss. Most medium access control techniques assume that a collision means total packet loss. However, we will show that this assumption is not always true, and we investigate how to leverage this fact. We first investigate fundamentally what happens when a collision occurs. We begin by deriving a physical layer algorithm that can identify which bits have been corrupted by collision. This algorithm accurately locates all collision induced errors when the channel signal to noise ratio is high enough for reliable communication. By leveraging this algorithm, we can produce a wide range of benefits. For example, by providing collision location information, we can enhance forward error correcting codes so that they may effectively completely remove the collision, saving a packet that would otherwise be discarded.