Enhancements of the modified PCF in IEEE 802.11 WLANs

The success of the IEEE 802.11 standard has prompted research into efficiency of the different medium access methods and their support for different traffic types. A modified version of the point coordination function (PCF) called modified PCF has been introduced as a way to improve the efficiency over the standard method. It has been shown through a simulation study and a mathematical analysis that channel utilization can be much improved compared to the standard, in case there is no so-called hidden station problem. However, under the hidden station problem, the efficiency of the modified PCF would obviously decrease. In this paper, some enhancements of the modified PCF are introduced. Firstly, we propose a retransmission process to allow frames involved in collisions to be retransmitted. Then, we propose a collision resolution mechanism to reduce the frame collision probability due to the hidden station problem. In addition, we propose a priority scheme to support prioritization for different traffic types such as interactive voice and video, and real-time data traffic in the modified PCF. To prevent the starvation of one low priority traffic, minimum transmission period is also guaranteed to each traffic type via an admission control algorithm. We study the performance of the modified PCF under the hidden station problem and the performance of the modified PCF with priority scheme through simulations. To illustrate the efficiency of the priority scheme, we therefore compare its simulation results with those of some standardized protocols: The distributed coordination function (DCF), the enhanced distributed channel access (EDCA), the PCF, and our previously proposed protocol: The modified PCF without priority scheme. The simulation results show that the increment of delay in the network due to the hidden station problem can be reduced using the proposed collision resolution mechanism. In addition, in a given scenario the modified PCF with priority scheme can provide better quality of service (QoS) support to different traffic types and also support a higher number of data stations than the previous proposals.