Hidden node problem

In wireless networking, the hidden node problem or hidden terminal problem occurs when a node can communicate with a wireless access point (AP), but cannot directly communicate with other nodes that are communicating with that AP. This leads to difficulties in medium access control sublayer since multiple nodes can send data packets to the AP simultaneously, which creates interference at the AP resulting in no packet getting through. Although some loss of packets is normal in wireless networking, and the higher layers will resend them, if one of the nodes is transferring a lot of large packets over a long period, the other node may get very little goodput. Practical protocol solutions exist to the hidden node problem. For example, Request To Send/Clear To Send (RTS/CTS) mechanisms where nodes send short packets to request permission of the access point to send longer data packets. Because responses from the AP are seen by all the nodes, the nodes can synchronize their transmissions to not interfere. However, the mechanism introduces latency, and the overhead can often be greater than the cost, particularly for short data packets. Hidden nodes in a wireless network are nodes that are out of range of other nodes or a collection of nodes. Consider a physical star topology with an access point with many nodes surrounding it in a circular fashion: each node is within communication range of the AP, but the nodes cannot communicate with each other. For example, in a wireless network, it is likely that the node at the far edge of the access point's range, which is known as A, can see the access point, but it is unlikely that the same node can communicate with a node on the opposite end of the access point's range, C. These nodes are known as hidden. Another example would be where A and C are either side of an obstacle that reflects or strongly absorbs radio waves, but nevertheless they can both still see the same AP. The problem is when nodes A and C start to send packets simultaneously to the access point B.