An extended contention period protocol for MIMO wireless networks

Abstract

The multiple-input multiple-output (MIMO) technique has been introduced to use in wireless networks to achieve the higher bit rate. Although the bit rate is increased, the throughput in wireless networks using MIMO technique is not increased by the same ratio. A number of new media access control (MAC) protocols have been proposed to increase the throughput in the MIMO wireless networks, but more overheads are added into the transmission process. This study proposes a new MAC protocol called the extended contention period (ECP) protocol which increases the throughput in the wireless networks and reduces the overheads in the transmission process. We also develop a simulation model to evaluate the performance of the ECP protocol and compare with the carrier sense multiple access with collision avoidance (CSMA/CA) protocol.