Performance Analysis of CSMA/CA in Wireless Local Area Network

With the rapid advance of mobile computing, high speed Wireless Local Area Networks (LAN) attracts a lot of research interests in recent years. A new international stander IEEE 802.11 on wireless LAN has been established. Its physical transmission is realized by either spread spectrum communication or non-directive infrared. The medium access control of IEEE 802.11 is using carrier sense multiple access with collision avoidance (CSMA/CA) as the basic level access. Continuing from the study of, we shall analyze IEEE 802.11 CSMA/CA performance with or without RTS/CTS in this paper. We have improved the simulation by including RTS/CTS exchanges, which is part of the CSMA/CA protocol. Using this methodology, we hoped to increase the number of successful transmissions and decrease the number of collisions within the WLAN. This particular aspect of the simulation is demonstrated in the Analysis section of this work. Additionally, the simulation makes sure that once an RTS/CTS handshake is completed; all other nodes not included in the data exchange remain silent. This is done to prevent nodes from getting into a continuous cycle of RTS/CTS exchanges. General Terms Wireless Local Area Network, CSMA/CA