Performance improvements in data transfer over 802.11 WLANs

IEEE 802.11 represents the dominant solution in the framework of WLANs and wireless access to network services. However, 802.11 WLANs standard presents some limitations in terms of throughput and delay with respect to wired networks. The paper presents an overview of the existing technologies for performance improvement in 802.11 WLANs, and introduces and compares novel promising solutions to the problem, based on different design principles.