Performance Analysis of DCF Access Schemes over IEEE 802.11A Physical Layer

IEEE 802.11a is one of the latest standards to be released by the IEEE Project 802. It has specified a new physical layer (PHY) to support higher data rates, known as the orthogonal frequency division multiplexing (OFDM). One of the medium access approaches adopted in the IEEE 802.11 specification is called distributed coordination function (DCF). DCF is a carrier sense multiple access with collision avoidance (CSMA/CA) scheme with binary slotted exponential backoff. The frames can be transmitted using the basic access scheme or the RTS/CTS scheme in DCF. It was shown in the literature that the RTS/CTS mechanism works well in most scenarios for the previously specified PHYs. In this work, a simple simulator is developed to verify the behavior of the RTS/CTS mechanism over OFDM PHY, which supports much higher data rates. KEYWORDS IEEE 802.11a, DCF, CSMA/CA, Basic Access, RTS/CTS, Performance Analysis.

• Type: Conference
• Year: 2003
• Where: IADIS
• Authors: S. Selvakennedy
• Keywords: Carrier Sense Multiple Access With Collision Avoidance, IADIS 2003, IADIS 2008, IEEE 802.11a, Orthogonal Frequency Division Multiplexing