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This paper presents an analytical model to predict energy consumption in saturated IEEE 802.11 single-hop ad hoc networks under ideal channel conditions. The model we introduce takes into account the different operational modes of the IEEE 802.11 DCF MAC, and is validated against packet level simulations. In contrast to previous works that attempted to characterize the energy consumption of IEEE 802.11 cards in isolated, contention-free channels (i.e., single sender/receiver pair), this paper investigates the extreme opposite case, i.e., when nodes need to contend for channel access under saturation conditions. In such scenarios, our main findings include: (1) contrary to what most previous results indicate, the radio's transmit mode has marginal impact on overall energy consumption, while other modes (receive, idle, etc.) are responsible for most of the energy consumed; (2) the energy cost to transmit useful data increases almost linearly with the network size; and (3) transmitting large payloads is more energy efficient under saturation conditions., Presented at the International Conference on Computer Communications and Networks (13th), held on 11-13 Oct 2004. Published in the Proceedings of the International Conference on Computer Communications and Networks (13th), p367-372, 2004.