Effect of Frame Aggregation on the Throughput Performance of IEEE 802.11n

The IEEE 802.11n standard aims at providing a data transmission rate of up to 600 Mbps. The frame aggregation techniques of IEEE 802.11n MAC layer play an important role in the enhancement of channel utilization. In this paper, we investigate the effect of IEEE 802.11n frame aggregation for two aggregation mechanisms: MAC protocol data unit aggregation (A-MPDU) and MAC service data unit aggregation (A-MSDU). We propose an analytical model based on an enhanced discrete time Markov chain (DTMC) model in order to describe the post- backoff behavior due to frame aggregation, and then evaluate the throughput performance. Analytical results based on the mathematical model are verified through simulation. The throughput performance of the A-MSDU mechanism outperforms the A-MPDU mechanism as the frame aggregation size becomes larger under an error-free environment. In addition, the throughput performance is significantly improved as the frame aggregation size increases.