Analysis and validation of the maximal reasonable link group size in static 802.11a Wireless Mesh Networks: A study towards channel assignment

There is already a vast literature on the efficiency of the 802.11a MAC using Markov Chain models. This current literature states that the output of these mathematical models are aggregated throughput values related to the number of radios sharing the same physical medium. The study presented in this paper shows an inaccuracy in the proposed Markov Chain models; when increasing the number of radios for saturated 802.11a MAC links using the Distributed Coordination Function the models no longer return true aggregated throughput values. The evaluation process of the presented work is based on aggregated throughput, delay and delay variation results obtained from conducted simulations and experiments. It will be further shown that more than three radios which are saturating the 802.11a MAC and sharing the same medium will lead to an unacceptable network performance. The evaluation of the results is based on ITU-T recommendations for IP networks under predefined network topology assumptions.