Performance Improvement for the Basic Access Mechanism of WLAN with Noise Detection

To improve the performance of wireless LAN in an error-prone radio channel, this paper proposes a new backoff counter chosen mechanism based on Noise Detection scheme, which is a method to distinguish between packets suffered by noise and collision. In this new mechanism, backoff counter can choose a lower value when the last transfer error is caused by noise, or choose a higher value when it meets a collision. The performance of the new access mechanism is evaluated by a modified Markov chain model. The numerical results show that this new mechanism can improve the saturation throughout, reduce the drop probability and shorten packet delay in a fading channel.