Access point-coordinated contention resolution for channel access in wireless LANs

The most widely deployed wireless networking standard, 802.11, grants access of the wireless channel to contending stations (STAs) through the Carrier Sense Multiple Access/ Collision avoidance (CSMA/CA) mechanism. This approach in general is not scalable, is biased against the network´s access point (AP), and does not satisfy the quality-of-service (QoS) requirements of different flow types. These problems persist even in the most recently ratified standard, 802.11e. In this paper, we propose a new channel access mechanism, ARC, which promotes collaboration among competing wireless STAs in order to provide (1) better channel utilization, (2) better support for QoS demanding flows, and (3) to resolve the bias against the AP. Furthermore, ARC is backward-compatible with the 802.11 standard. Simulation results validate the efficacy of ARC.