An access protocol for a wireless home network

Wireless technology is an attractive option to network devices in the home as it does not require rewiring the home. The media access protocol (MAC) plays a crucial role in allowing multiple devices to transmit and receive on the shared wireless medium and thereby determining the efficiency of a wireless home network (WiHN). It is found that many of the protocols proposed to date like the Distributed Foundation Wireless MAC (DFWMAC) in the IEEE 802.11 standard have poor performance at high data rates (100 Mbps). We modify the slotted-idle sense multiple access protocol and propose a simple and efficient MAC protocol which fits well with the WiHN architecture. We present a queuing analysis and simulation results of the performance of the wireless home network MAC (WiHNMAC) protocol.