Throughput Analysis of Cooperative Access Protocol for Multi-Rate WLANs

In this paper, we analyze the throughput performance of a new access protocol, called Cooperative Access with Relay´s Data (CARD) for multi-rate wireless local area networks (WLANs). CARD allows remote source nodes to transmit their information at a higher data rate to Access Point (AP) by using intermediate nodes as relays, particularly, a relay node sends its own data packet after forwarding a packet from the original source node, thus to improve system throughput. We also develop a Markov chain model to capture channel conditions. Our analysis considers both ideal and error-prone channel conditions. Analytical results are verified by computer simulations and show significance improvement in the system throughput.