In this paper we propose a cooperative MAC protocol for Wireless Local Area Networks (WLAN) that involves the concept of cooperation among nodes to avoid the negative effect caused by multi rate modulation employed in IEEE 802.11 standards. In our proposed protocol a low data rate direct transmission link is replaced by two faster transmission links using a relay node. During transmission, each node selects either direct or indirect transmission (through a helper node) in order to minimize the total transmission time and utilizes the packet aggregation concept to improve the system throughput. The new protocol does not violate the inter frame space specified in IEEE 802.11 and shows compatibility with the standard. We give the mathematical analysis that shows that our proposed protocol increases the system throughput considerably in comparison to the existing ones. The analytical results are supported with the help of simulation. We have shown how this protocol can be implemented in combination with others to improve the system throughput in specific network scenarios.
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