IEEE 802.11 Wireless LAN : Throughput Enhancement and Bandwidth Analysis

In recent years, IEEE 802.11 Wireless LAN (WLAN) has emerged as a prevailing technology for the broadband wireless networking. Along with many emerging applications and services over WLANs, the demands for faster and higher-capacity WLANs have been growing fast. However, MAC layer restrains the performance improvement due to its different overhead. We proposed an efficient MAC scheme 'Frame Aggregation Method' that would mitigate the overhead inefficiency. The principle of 'Frame Aggregation Method' is to aggregate as many as possible packets from the upper layer into large frames. Thus, the frames will be very large as long as there are enough packets to be aggregated. To support various functionalities provided by 'Frame Aggregation Method', new MAC frame formats and the corresponding dynamic logic such as queuing mechanisms are designed. The main contribution of this project is the exact calculation of the theoretical maximum throughput for a variety of IEEE 802.11 technologies. This formula is important to researchers as well as system designers. It is a strict barrier that cannot be overcome by any means while remaining standard-compliant.