Improving transport layer performance by using A novel medium access control protocol with fast collision resolution in wireless LANs

ABSTRACT

Development of efficient medium access control (MAC) protocols is a fundamental research issue in high-speed wireless local area networks (LANs). In this paper, we focus on the performance improvement both of MAC layer and transport layer by using a novel medium access control protocol in high-speed wireless LANs which use carrier sense multiple access/collision avoidance(CSMA/CA). We propose an efficient distributed contention-based MAC protocol, namely, the Fast Collision Resolution (FCR) algorithm, and show that the proposed FCR algorithm provides high throughput and low latency while improving the fairness performance for serving users in wireless LANs. The performance of the FCR algorithm is compared with that of the IEEE 802.11 MAC algorithm via extensive simulation studies both in MAC layer and transport layer. The results show that the FCR algorithm achieves a significantly higher efficiency than the IEEE 802.11 MAC algorithm and is well suited for transport layer protocols such as transmission control protocol (TCP) and user datagram protocol (UDP).

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INDEX TERMS

Primary Classification:
  C. Computer Systems Organization
  C.2 COMPUTER-COMMUNICATION NETWORKS
      C.2.5 Local and Wide-Area Networks
          Subjects: Access schemes

Additional Classification:
  D. Software
  D.2 SOFTWARE ENGINEERING
      D.2.8 Metrics
          Subjects: Performance measures; Complexity measures

General Terms:
Algorithms

Keywords:
IEEE 802.11, Medium Access Control (MAC), TCP, UDP, Wireless LANs (WLANs), backoff