Group-Based Medium Access for Next-GenerationWireless LANs
WOWMOM '06 Proceedings of the 2006 International Symposium on on World of Wireless, Mobile and Multimedia Networks
On improving performance for IEEE 802.11 wireless lans under congested and error-prone environments
IMSA'06 Proceedings of the 24th IASTED international conference on Internet and multimedia systems and applications
ICC'09 Proceedings of the 2009 IEEE international conference on Communications
A performance analysis of block ACK scheme for IEEE 802.11e networks
Computer Networks: The International Journal of Computer and Telecommunications Networking
Collision-Aware Rate Adaptation in multi-rate WLANs: Design and implementation
Computer Networks: The International Journal of Computer and Telecommunications Networking
REACT: Rate Adaptation using Coherence Time in 802.11 WLANs
Computer Communications
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IEEE 802.11 Medium Access Control (MAC) called Distributed Coordination Function (DCF) provides two different access modes, namely, 2-way (basic access) and 4-way (RTS/CTS) handshaking. The 4-way handshaking has been introduced in order to combat the hidden terminal phenomenon. It has been also proved that such a mechanism can be beneficial even in the absence of hidden terminals, because of the collision time reduction. In this paper, we analyze the effectiveness of the RTS/CTS access mode, in current 802.11b and 802.11a networks. Since the rates employed for control frame transmissions can be much lower than the rate employed for data frames, the assumption on the basis of the4-way handshaking introduction, i.e., the short transmission time of the RTS control frame, is no more valid. As a consequence, the basic access mode results in the optimal access solution in most cases, even in heavy load conditions with hidden nodes. We compare the 2-way and 4-way access performances through both analytical and simulation tools. We also discuss the operating conditions at which the switch from an access mode to another is desired in both the cases of uniform and heterogeneous data rates among the stations. We conclude that, for the heterogeneous data rate environments, the RTS/CTS threshold should be redefined as a frame transmission time rather than as a frame size.