Channel Bounding and MAC Protection Mechanisms for 802.11ac

In this paper, we investigate the problem of channel bounding in wireless local area networks (WLANs). We propose a MAC protection mechanism to combat the hidden node problem on non-primary channels of a basic service set (BSS). Simulation results show that the proposed MAC protection mechanism is effective in combating hidden nodes and improving throughput of 80MHz stations. The proposed scheme has been adopted into the IEEE 802.11ac specification as a mandatory feature. Furthermore, we extend the medium access mechanisms defined in 802.11n for a wider bandwidth, evaluate fairness of the 802.11n PIFS medium access mechanisms, and compare the performance of a dynamic bandwidth scheme with that of a static bandwidth implementation.