Enhancement of mesh network oriented IEEE 802.11 MAC protocol

Wireless communications have become very diverse. Mesh network technologies represent a promising architecture for future communications to achieve a ubiquitous wireless access environment. However, when the IEEE 802.11 protocol is used in a mesh network, there are two issues. One is the total throughput degradation, and the other is fairness degradation. We present two methods to address these issues by defining new control packets: the invite to send (ITS) and copied CTS (CCTS) to address the total throughput degradation, and wait to send (WTS) to address fairness degradation. Based on computer simulations, we show that the proposed methods are very effective in improving the total throughput performance and degree of fairness.