On stochastic geometry analysis of dense WLAN with dynamic carrier sense threshold and rate control

Recently, wireless local area networks (WLANs) have been densely deployed. In high density WLANs, co-channel interference has become one of the biggest challenges for the network performance. The IEEE 802.11 based WLANs have limited wireless channels, therefore, not all the adjacent APs can work in different non-overlapping channels and co-channel interference will affect the network performance severely. To get better network performance, transmit power control scheme is used to reduce the co-channel interference from neighbour nodes. However, transmit power control scheme may cause asymmetric links, we propose a dynamic carrier sense and rate control (DCR) scheme to improve the network performance in dense WLANs. The DCR scheme mainly tunes the carrier sense threshold (CST) and rate for the edge stations (STAs). A stochastic geometry model is also demonstrated for the analysis of the network performance. The network performance is evaluated by the coverage probability. Then, we simulate the coverage probability of WLAN which uses the existing static carrier sense threshold scheme and the proposed DCR scheme. Simulation results show that the proposed DCR scheme yields better coverage probability compared with the existing static carrier sense threshold scheme.