Time-correlated fading can mitigate rate anomaly in IEEE 802.11 WLANs

It is well known that rate anomaly may occur when more than two stations communicating with an AP use different data rates in IEEE 802.11 WLANs. This statement may be valid based on the assumption that each station equally attempts channel access. However, this paper confirms that if stations suffer from different time-correlated fading channels, they have a different access rate, i.e., the stronger the signal strength, the higher the access rate. Extensive simulation study supports this assertion on various channel environments.