Channel Access for Bandwidth Management in Link-Adaptive WLANs with Hidden Stations

The increase in users of wireless local area networks (WLAN) has raised the need for bandwidth management that prevents bandwidth monopolization and that meets users´ requirements. In this paper, we propose and design a distributed channel access mechanism for bandwidth management in WLANs. Our mechanism can flexibly assign bandwidth based on a theoretical estimation, even in poor network conditions, where hidden stations exist and the physical transmission rates vary. The usefulness of our mechanism is validated through evaluations using computer simulations.