Throughput analysis of IEEE 802.11 WLANs with Automatic Rate Fallback in a lossy channel

This paper presents a new two-step mathematical model which analyzes the throughput of the IEEE 802.11 distributed coordination function (DCF) with the automatic rate fallback (ARF) rate adaptation algorithm. First, the ARF algorithm is modeled as a discrete-time Markov chain and, from the Markov chain, the station distribution among physical rates is obtained. Then, it is fed to the DCF throughput model which takes the backoff mechanism into account. This two-step approach simplifies the overall model by separating the ARF algorithm and the backoff mechanism in modeling.