Analysis of Performance of a TDMA-based Distributed MAC Protocol in Single-hop Wireless Networks

Nowadays, the IEEE 802.11 infrastructure basic service set (BSS) network is the most widely used wireless LAN (WLAN) system. There are growing needs to interconnect access points (APs) of separate BSSs to create an IEEE 802.11 extended service set (ESS) mesh network over the wireless medium. Mesh distributed coordination function (MDCF) is a novel medium access control (MAC) protocol, designed for interconnecting a large number of APs to form an efficient wireless multi-hop network supporting quality of service (QoS). Based on that an efficient ESS mesh network can be created. This paper evaluates the traffic performance of MDCF by using the analytical approach. Based on the established mathematical model, the optimal frame parameter settings for MDCF can be precisely determined.