Performance analysis of IEEE 802.11a WLAN in block fading channel using SDL simulation

Several new, analytic and simulation, results on the throughput and discard probability of IEEE 802.11a WLAN in error-prone channels are presented. The well-known results on the IEEE 802.11 DCF performance for a channel with uniformly distributed packet errors are extended for the case of space (antenna) diversity at the access point. The analytic expressions are validated via extensive simulations using our SDL-based model of the IEEE 802.11a WLAN. We also developed a four-state Markov model for a bursty block-fading channel based on the modified Gilbert-Elliott channel, and obtained promising results for future low-layer analysis on the WLAN performance.