Efficient access to extended channel bandwidth in wireless LAN

The channel bonding technique proposed in the IEEE 802.11ac draft makes it possible to multiply the physical layer data rate of the network. Unfortunately, the medium access control (MAC) protocol in 802.11ac that allocates the entire extended bandwidth to a single user at a time is very inefficient if the transmitted data frames are not sufficiently long. A partial bonding MAC (pbMAC) protocol is proposed that allocates only a part of the available bandwidth to a single user at a time. The simulation results show that the pbMAC gives a better utilisation of extended bandwidth than the MAC protocol in 802.11ac.