Performance Analysis of IEEE 802.11 in Multi-hop Wireless Networks

Abstract

Multi-hop wireless networks provide a quick and easy way for networking when we need a temporary network or when cabling is difficult. The 802.11 Medium Access Control (MAC) plays an important role in the achievable system performance. There have been many studies on analytic modeling of single-hop 802.11 wireless networks but only a few on the analysis of multi-hop wireless networks. Furthermore, the object of these researches is an homogeneous ad-hoc wireless networks; therefore they are not appropriate for a network with structure such as wireless mesh networks. This paper introduces an analytic model of throughput performance for the IEEE 802.11 multi-hop networks, which allows us to compute the achievable throughput on a given path in multi-hop wireless networks. The model shows that there is an optimal point at which throughput is maximized. Using this model and a Markov model for modeling the operation of the IEEE 802.11 DCF we can determine the amount of data that each node should inject to the network to get the best throughput performance.