Efficient MAC strategies for the IEEE 802.11n wireless LANs

Abstract

Current IEEE 802.11 wireless local area network (WLAN) standard products can provide up to 54 Mbps raw transmission rate, while non-standard WLAN products with 108 Mbps have already appeared in the market, and the next generation WLAN will provide much higher transmission rates. However, the medium access control (MAC) was designed for lower data rates, such as 1-2 Mbps, and it is not an efficient MAC. Furthermore, a theoretical throughput limit exists due to overhead and limitations of physical implementations, and therefore increasing transmission rate cannot help a lot. Designing efficient MAC strategies becomes critical and important. In this paper, we introduce and propose a series of efficient MAC strategies to overcome the fundamental overhead, and to improve performance. The protocols and mechanisms include Direct Link Protocol, Without Acknowledgement, Without Retransmissions, Block Acknowledgement Protocol, Concatenation, Packing, Multiple Frame Transmission (versions 1 and 2) and Piggyback. The aim of this paper is to introduce and propose these efficient new MACs not only for current IEEE 802.11 standards (.11a/.11b/.11g), but also for the next generation WLAN with higher speed and higher throughput, especially for IEEE 802.11n. Copyright © 2006 John Wiley & Sons, Ltd.