A General Model and Analysis of Physical Layer Capture in 802.11 Networks

Abstract— While packet capture has been observed in real implementations of 802.11 devices, there is a lack of accurate models that describe the phenomenon. We present a general analytical model and an iterative method that predicts error probabilities and throughputs of packet transmissions with multiple senderreceiver pairs. Our model offers a more accurate prediction than previous work by taking into account the cumulative strength of interference signals and using the BER model to convert a signal to interference and noise ratio value to a bit error probability. This permits the analysis of packet reception at any transmission rate with interference from neighbors at any set of locations. We also prove that our iterative method converges, and we verify the accuracy of our model through simulations in Qualnet. Last, we present a rate assignment algorithm to reduce the average delay as an application of our analysis.

• Type: Conference
• Year: 2006
• Where: INFOCOM
• Authors: Hoon Chang, Vishal Misra, Dan Rubenstein
• Keywords: Communications, General Analytical Model, INFOCOM 2006, Iterative Method, Model