Efficient two-hop wireless channel access protocol

It is getting popular to get access to the Internet through wireless LAN in hot spots such as an airport lounge, a hotel lobby, a cafe and a university campus. Although spatial coverage is limited, the comfortable speed is available there. However, there exist nodes that cannot communicate directly with an access point (AP) because of the distant location or the shadowing due to obstacles. In this paper, we investigate the protocol, which accommodates the nodes that cannot be directly accessible from an AP by introducing relaying capability, and propose a new effective two-hop wireless channel access protocol based upon HiperLAN/2. In the proposed scheme, the resources are reused at nodes separated far enough such that they do not cause packet collision. Thus, the throughput improvement is expected and is confirmed by computer simulation.