An Analytical Model for the IEEE 802.11 DCF WLAN with Multiple Co-channel Cells

This paper proposes a new analytical model to evaluate the Distributed Coordination Function (DCF) performance of a multi-cell wireless local area network (WLAN). Current DCF analytical models concentrate on the performance analysis of a single-cell WLAN and have not considered the interference impact from neighboring co-channel cells using the same frequency channels. This paper analyzes DCF performance in an environment of multiple cells and investigates the vital effects of co-channel interference. At the same time, a realistic propagation model with lognormal shadowing is taken into account. In our model, users are located at different positions in a cell and experience different signal-to-interference ratio (SIR) at the access point (AP). As a result, the performance of each user is distinct. The proposed model is able to evaluate the performance for each user in terms of SIR, packet error rate (PER), transmission probability (TP), collision probability (CP), etc. In addition, the system throughput (TH) is calculated to evaluate the overall efficiency of each cell.