Review Article Open Access

PERFORMANCE ANALYSIS OF WIRELESS LANs USING DISTRIBUTED COORDINATED FUNCTION

Abstract

Wireless networks running in infrastructure mode use one or more WAPs (Wireless Access Points) to connect the wireless network nodes to a wired network segment. A single WAP servicing a given area is called a Basic Service Set (BSS). This service area can be extended by adding more WAPs. This is called, appropriately, an extended basic Service Set (EBSS). All the registered nodes and relaying traffic in the network is controlled by the Wireless Access Points (henceforth referred to as Access Points or AP).Though all the traffic in the network is routed through AP, the open nature of the underlying medium is prone to environmental factors, etc. which degrade the performance of overall network. However, in a saturated case AP becomes the point of dispute among the nodes which can result in collisions, packet drops etc. In this paper, the authors have analysed the performance of 802.11 wireless local area networks that utilizes the Distributed Coordination Function (DCF). A simulation study having contending stations within the transmission range of an AP in a saturated environment are considered, in view of varying data rates and packet sizes in an error free environment. Simulation results are presented and analysed in the end

Varun Singh, Uttam Nath

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