Performance Characterization of IEEE 802.11s Compatible MAC Protocols

Abstract

Wireless Mesh Network (WMN) [1] deployment based on IEEE 802.11s [2] standard is a popular choice in setting up cost-efficient alternative to support broadband internet services to a larger population. They can provide network connectivity over large geography when compared to WLANs. WMN makes use of Distributed Coordination Function (DCF) Medium Access Control (MAC) protocol with Binary Exponential Backoff (BEB) algorithm to avoid collision due to simultaneous transmissions by more than one user at the same time. These collisions bring the network performance drastically down if not handled properly. Thus this work tries to evaluate the suitability of the better efficient CA algorithms (EIED, EILD, MILD, PB, CCW, EBO, HBA…) which can replace BEB to support higher throughput for IEEE 802.11s networks (WMNs). The NS-3 [3] simulation results indicate that Polynomial Backoff (PB) performs better than others against the BEB algorithm in about 52 % of network scenarios and it is suggested to operate with TWO radios enabled with all access points.