Joint Physical-MAC Layer Design Framework for Wireless LANs

This paper proposes a joint physical-MAC layer design framework for estimating as well as improving the capacity of wireless LANs. The framework is based on the integration of radio propagation modeling(i.e., the physical layer) and the layer-2 network protocol (i.e., the MAC layer). The concept is to gather information of wireless channel conditions and share this knowledge with the MAC protocol, so that the network can operate efficiently even in the harsh interfering environments. The proposed framework is simple and easy to implement, and can be used for applications requiring large-scale wireless networks such as a campus-wide wireless LAN. In this paper the cross-layer design framework is described and two algorithms for the implementation of the framework are presented.