Physical layer effects on MAC layer performance of IEEE 802.11 a and b WLAN on the Martian surface

The MAC layer performance of IEEE 802.11a and b WLAN standards on the Martian surface is studied. The Gusev Crater region and the Meridiani Planum (Hematite) region are chosen as example sites based on the mission science and mission success criteria. The radio frequency (RF) multipath environment is obtained using digital elevation maps (DEMs) from the Mars Global Surveyor mission, taking into account the atmosphere and other factors on the Martian surface. Two methods are presented to incorporate the physical layer effects on the Martian surface into the OP-NET modeler. Simple network configurations are considered. Three performance metrics are used: energy per successful bit, throughput per unit load and average delay. The effects of packet size, data rates, retry limits are studied and the use of RAKE receivers for 802.11b is considered. It is observed that the transmission parameters must be carefully selected in order to have acceptable performance levels. Larger packet sizes improve energy efficiency but increase delay and reduce throughput. For 802.11a, the 12 Mbps rate is found to provide acceptable results. For 802.11b, the 11 Mbps rate provides good results when a RAKE receiver is employed. Overall, the performance of 802.11a is found to be better than the performance of 802.11b