Dynamic tuning of the IEEE 802.11 distributed coordination function to derive a theoretical throughput limit

Abstract

IEEE 802.11 is the most popular and widely used standard for wireless local area network communication. It has attracted countless numbers of studies devoted to improving the performance of the standard in many ways. In this article, we performed theoretical analyses for providing a solution to the maximum throughput problem for the IEEE 802.11 distributed coordination function, and an algorithm using a binary cubic equation for obtaining a much closer approximation of the optimal solution than previous algorithms. Moreover, by studying and analyzing the characteristics of the proposed algorithm, we found that the effects of backoff counter consecutive freeze process could be neglected or even disregarded. Using the NS2 network simulator, we not only showed that the proposed theoretical analysis complied with the simulated results, but also verified that the proposed approach outperformed others in achieving a much closer approximation to the optimal solution.