Saturation Throughput - Delay Analysis of IEEE 802.11 DCF in Fading Channel

Abstract

In this paper, we analytically analyzed the impact of an error-prone channel over all performance measures in a trafficsaturated IEEE 802.11 WLAN. We calculated station's transmission probability by using the modified Markov chain model of the backoff window size that considers the frame-error rates and maximal allowable number of retransmission attempts. The frame error rate has a significant impact over theoretical throughput, mean frame delay, and discard probability. The peak throughput of a WLAN is insensitive of the maximal number of retransmissions. Discard probabilities are insensitive to the station access method, Basic or RTS/CTS.