Recent developments of wireless communication devices have increased the interest in wireless networks. The hidden node problem is one of the major problems which leads to packet dropping and transfer delays via blind collisions. In this paper, we discuss the design factors of some existing mechanisms to deal with hidden node avoidance, and present a timeline of the development of these mechanisms. We classify and characterize the existing mechanisms into three categories, which are handshaking, busy tone multiple accesses, and routing management mechanisms. This classification and characterization provides a better qualitative comparison and presents a clear picture of the strengths and weaknesses of these mechanisms. Finally, we highlight the open issues that still need to be addressed.