Delay performance analysis of 802.11

In this paper, we propose a method for reducing the mean delay and enhancing the average system throughput of IEEE 802.11 based wireless local area networks (WLANs). The primary medium access control (MAC) technique of the 802.11 network is the distributed coordination function(DCF). In DCF, carrier sense multiple access with collision avoidance(CSMA/CA) is used with binary slotted exponential backoff. We propose a throughput enhancement mechanism for DCF in which each contending station in the WLAN modifies its set back-off time based on the information obtained from the transmitting station. Simulation results are presented to show the advantages of the proposed method with respect to the mean delay and average system throughput.