Comparison of Throughput Performance for the IEEE 802.11a and 802.11g Networks

The 802. llg offers backward compatibility to 802.11b operating in 2.4 GHz with the same set of MAC parameters. However, this compatibility causes 802.1 lg to perform differently as 802.11a in terms of radio throughput performance, although both standards employ orthogonal frequency division multiplexing (OFDM) technology to achieve high data rate. In this paper, we compare and present an in- depth analysis of the throughput performance of both 802.11a and 802.1 lg standards. In order to compare the throughput performance of 802.11a and 802.1 lg, a Markov chain model of IEEE 802.11 MAC is adopted to evaluate the saturation throughput. Our analytical and experimental results show an inferior throughput performance for 802.1 lg even with the same OFDM technology as employed for 802.11a.