Enhancing MAC Performance with a Reverse Direction Protocol for High-Capacity Wireless LANs

Abstract

IEEE 802.11 wireless local area networks (WLANs) legacy standards can provide up to 54 Mbps, and the next generation WLAN will offer a physical-layer data rate at least an-order-of-magnitude higher than the existing standards. However, when the current medium access control (MAC) is applied directly to the higher-data-rate WLAN, it leads to high protocol overhead and significant throughput degradation because of its design for lower data rates. Designing efficient MAC schemes becomes critical and crucial. In this paper, a novel reverse direction (RD) protocol is proposed to transfer data in both directions, to overcome the fundamental overhead and to improve performance. The aim is to render the MAC efficient and robust not only for current IEEE 802.11a/b/g standards, but also for the next generation WLAN with higher data rate and higher throughput, i.e, upcoming IEEE 802.11n. Simulations with OPNET are performed and the comprehensive simulation results show that the novel RD protocol improves performance significantly.