Simple Link-layer Diversity Combining using Majority Voting in Dense WLANs

Abstract

In high-density wireless local area networks (WLANs), if a number of neighboring nodes simultaneously use limited radio frequency resources, a large amount of interference may reduce the reliability of data transmission significantly. To enhance the transmission reliability by exploiting neighboring APs, we consider a centralized WLAN with a control node (CN), which performs a simple link-layer cooperative processing for overheard transmissions from multiple APs. While APs in the conventional WLAN protocol simply discard erroneous data frames and those transmitted from non-associated stations, the proposed medium access control (MAC) protocol uses redundant wireless links between the stations and non-associated APs in high-density WLANs. In the proposed MAC protocol, CN corrects erroneous uplink data frames by using a simple diversity combining scheme, which is based on a majority voting algorithm. To evaluate the performance of the proposed MAC protocol, we perform simulation studies and empirical experiments using software-defined radio equipment.