Analyzing and improving the IEEE 802.11-MAC protocol for wireless LANs

The MAC-part of the upcoming IEEE 802.11 standard for wireless LANs-named DFWMAC is based on a CSMA/CA-type access protocol with a rotating backoff window and an optional RTS/CTS message exchange. In this paper, following a short presentation of DFWMAC we present the results of our simulative analysis of DFWMAC focussing on analysis and improvements of the basic key mechanisms-the RTS/CTS message exchange and the backoff algorithm.