Analysis of CSMA/CA protocol for wireless networking of ATM multiservice applications

The performance of the IEEE 802.11 protocol for wireless local area networks (WLAN), is analysed when applied to the case of a wideband WLAN carrying high bit rate multimedia services (such as voice, video and high speed data) that should be interconnected with a wired, ATM based, broadband network. The paper evaluates the protocol in this more advanced environment that is supposed to be the trend of local area networking in the medium term future. As far as the interface with ATM is considered, the use of cell clustering in longer radio packets is also proposed and discussed, showing that it can significantly improve the protocol performance. Overall the results obtained are very encouraging suggesting that the protocol may be considered as a starting point for the development of a wireless wideband LAN.