Extension to DCF for wireless local area networks — ExDCF

Abstract

In typical installation of an 802.11 based Wireless Local Area Network(WLAN),mobile hosts would access the network through Access Points(AP).Since the communication link between two mobile stations in the same WLAN effectively becomes a two-hop path,even if they can hear each other,the throughput degrades significantly.In this paper,ExDCF protocol as an extension to standard Distributed Coordination Function(DCF)protocol in WLAN was proposed,which could improve the throughput between two mobile stations more than twice.In ExDCF,when two mobile nodes are in the same transmission range,the data packets will be sent directly by the source to the destination without AP.Reversely,the data packets need forwarding by AP.However,AP can relay them without contention of the channel.Theoretical analysis and simulation results show that our ExDCF works better in WLAN than the standard DCF while remaining compatible to the standard DCF.