Latin square based channel access scheduling in large WLAN systems

WLAN systems based on the IEEE 802.11 could contain hundreds even up to thousands of wireless access points nowadays. However, IEEE 802.11 MAC protocols, including DCF, PCF and EDCA mechanisms, are unable to meet the challenges to provide collision freedom, especially in distributed large scale WLAN systems. We propose a channel access scheduling protocol based on Latin squares, called DCLASS (Distributed Coordination based on Latin SquareS), that provides collision-free CSMA based channel access coordination functions in large scale wireless networks with stringent performance demands. The performance of DCLASS is evaluated using an IEEE standards compliant simulation toolkit, QualNet 4.5, in distributed WLAN systems. The simulation results show the superior performance of DCLASS in contrast to IEEE 802.11 DCF under various scenarios.