The IEEE 802.11 Distributed Coordination Function in Small-Scale Ad-Hoc Wireless LANs

The IEEE 802.11 standards for wireless local area networks define how the stations of an ad-hoc wireless network coordinate in order to share the medium efficiently. This work investigates the performance of such a network by considering the two different access mechanisms proposed in these standards. The IEEE 802.11 access mechanisms are based on the carrier sense multiple access with collision avoidance (CSMA/CA) protocol using a binary slotted exponential backoff mechanism. The basic CSMA/CA mechanism uses an acknowledgment message at the end of each transmitted packet, whereas the request to send/clear to send (RTS/CTS) CSMA/CA mechanism also uses a RTS/CTS message exchange before transmitting a packet. In this work, we analyze these two access mechanisms in terms of throughput and delay. Extensive numerical results are presented to highlight the characteristics of each access mechanism and to define the dependence of each mechanism on the backoff procedure parameters.