Saturation throughput analysis of Multiband-OFDM ultra wideband networks

The saturation throughput analysis of the prioritized contention access (PCA) of the WiMedia Ultra Wideband (UWB) standard is presented in this paper. In the WiMedia standard, the Multiband Orthogonal Frequency Division Multiplexing (MB-OFDM) is used as the basic physical scheme. An in-depth Bit Error Rate (BER) performance analysis of the MB-OFDM UWB system using IEEE 802.15.3a channel models is conducted to aid the throughput analysis. The PCA throughput performance analysis is carried out by extending an original Enhanced Distributed Contention Access (EDCA) model for 802.11e into the MB-OFDM UWB protocol. The extended model considers the effects of the bit error rate, the transmission opportunity limits, and the uniqueness of WiMedia MAC timing structure. The results illustrate that the station saturation throughput of the PCA scheme is sensitive to the frame payload length, and there exists an optimal frame payload length that maximizes the saturation throughput. The results also show that the saturation throughput of the Access Category (AC) with higher priority outperforms the lower prioritized AC under all types of BER conditions.