WSN02-1: Analysis of IEEE 802.11 DCF with Hidden Terminals

The mandatory access mode in IEEE 802.11 MAC is distributed coordination function (DCF), which provides both basic access and RTS/CTS(request-to-send/clear-to-send) access. Previous modeling work for DCF only provides analysis when all the nodes in WLAN lie in the carrier sense range of each other. However, in real deployment of WLAN, all the stations are in the communication range of access point (AP) but not necessarily with respect to each other, which results in hidden terminals(HT) and degrades the performance. This paper presents an accurate analytical model for DCF with hidden terminals through Markov chain for throughput in saturated situation. The analytical model is suitable for both basic and RTS/CTS access mechanisms, and is evaluated by extensive simulation results.