CSMA/CD protocol can be considered as a refinement over the CSMA scheme. It has evolved to overcome one glaring inefficiency of CSMA. In CSMA scheme, when two packets collide the channel remains unutilized for the entire duration of transmission time of both the packets. If the propagation time is small (which is usually the case) compared to the packet transmission time, wasted channel capacity can be considerable. This wastage of channel capacity can be reduced if the nodes continue to monitor the channel while transmitting a packet and immediately cease transmission when collision is detected. This refined scheme is known as Carrier Sensed Multiple Access with Collision Detection (CSMA/CD) or Listen-While-Talk.
On top of the CSMA, the following rules are added to convert it into CSMA/CD:
- If a collision is detected during transmission of a packet, the node immediately ceases transmission and it transmits jamming signal for a brief duration to ensure that all stations know that collision has occurred.
- After transmitting the jamming signal, the node waits for a random amount of time and then transmission is resumed.
Flow diagram for the CSMA/CD