Performance Analysis of m-Retry BEB Based DCF under Unsaturated Traffic Condition

The IEEE 802.11 standard offers a cheap and promising solution for small scale wireless networks. Due to the self configuring nature, WLANs do not require large scale infrastructure deployment, and are scalable and easily maintainable which incited its popularity in both literature and industry. In real environment, these networks operate mostly under unsaturated condition. We investigate performance of such a network with m-retry limit BEB based DCF. We consider imperfect channel with provision for power capture. Our method employs a Markov model and represents the most common performance measures in terms of network parameters making the model and mathematical analysis useful in network design and planning. We also explore the effects of packet error, network size, initial contention window, and retry limit on overall performance of WLANs.