Enhancing performance of the IEEE 802.11 distributed coordination function via packet bursting

During the past few years, wireless local area networks (WLANs) have become extremely popular. The IEEE 802.11 protocol is the dominating standard for WLANs employing the distributed coordination function (DCF) as its essential medium access control (MAC) mechanism. This paper presents a simple and accurate analysis using Markov chain modelling to compute IEEE 802.11 DCF performance, in the absence of hidden stations and transmission errors. This mathematical analysis calculates in addition to the throughput efficiency, the average packet delay and the packet drop probability for both the basic access and RTS/CTS medium access schemes. The derived analysis, which takes into account packet retry limits, is validated by comparison with OPNET simulation results. The mathematical model is used to study the effectiveness of the RTS/CTS scheme at high data rates and the performance improvements of transmitting a burst of packets after winning the contention for medium access. Packet bursting considerably increases both throughput and packet delay performance but lowers the short-term fairness on medium access.