Enhancing MAC performance of DCF protocol for IEEE 802.11 wireless LANs

Woo-Yong Choi

   The DCF (Distributed Coordination Function) is the basic MAC (Medium Access Control) protocol of IEEE 802.11 wire-less LANs and compatible with various IEEE 802.11 PHY extensions. The performance of the DCF degrades exponentially as the number of nodes participating in the DCF transmission procedure increases. To deal with this problem, we propose a simple, however efficient modification of the DCF by which the performance of the DCF is greatly enhanced.

Keywords: wireless LAN, MAC, DCF, throughput

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