An Analysis of Different Backoff Functions for an IEEE 802.11 WLAN

We compare the performance of different backoff functions for the multiple access protocol in an IEEE 802.11 wireless LAN (WLAN). We provide a unified analytical model with explicit expressions for the mean and standard deviation of the access delay for generalized exponential, polynomial and linear backoff functions. Using our model, we show that linear and polynomial backoffs with appropriate parameter settings can improve upon binary exponential backoff specified in the 802.11 WLAN standards, in terms of throughput, access delay statistics and packet drop rate.