Implementation and Experimental Evaluation of a Collision-Free MAC Protocol for WLANs
Abstract
Collisions are a main cause of throughput degradation in Wireless LANs. The current contention mechanism for these networks is based on a random backoff strategy to avoid collisions with other transmitters. Even though it can reduce the probability of collisions, the random backoff prevents users from achieving Collision-Free schedules, where the channel would be used more efficiently. Modifying the contention mechanism by waiting for a deterministic timer after successful transmissions, users would be able to construct a Collision-Free schedule among successful contenders. This work shows the experimental results of a Collision-Free MAC (CF-MAC) protocol for WLANs using commercial hardware and open firmware for wireless network cards which is able to support many users. Testbed results show that the proposed CF-MAC protocol leads to a better distribution of the available bandwidth among users, higher throughput and lower losses than the unmodified WLANs clients using a legacy firmware.
Cite
@article{arxiv.1410.7924,
title = {Implementation and Experimental Evaluation of a Collision-Free MAC Protocol for WLANs},
author = {Luis Sanabria-Russo and Francesco Gringoli and Jaume Barcelo and Boris Bellalta},
journal= {arXiv preprint arXiv:1410.7924},
year = {2014}
}
Comments
This paper was submitted to the IEEE International Conference on Communications 2015 and it is waiting for approval