Throughput and fairness properties of asynchronous data transfer methods in the IEEE 802.11 MAC protocol

To satisfy the needs of wireless data networking, study group 802.11 was formed under IEEE project 802 to recommend an international standard for wireless local area networks (WLANs). A key part of standard are the medium access control (MAC) protocols needed to support asynchronous and time bounded delivery of data frames. We conduct a performance evaluation of the asynchronous data transfer protocols that are a part of the proposed IEEE 802.11 standard taking into account the decentralized nature of communication between stations, the possibility of "capture", and presence of "hidden stations". We compute the system throughput and evaluate the fairness properties of the proposed MAC protocols and evaluate the impact of spatial characteristics on the performance of the system. Further, extensive numerical results are presented.