CSMAC: A New Centralized Scheduling-Based MAC Protocol for Wireless LAN

Medium access control (MAC) is a key issue for the efficiency of IEEE 802.11 wireless local area network. Legacy 802.11 DCF, using CSMA/CA and a random back-off mechanism, provides a simple-to-implement solution, however it achieves very low throughput. Exploiting the existence of a central entity in the infrastructure mode of an 802.11 wireless network, we propose a new centralized scheduling-based MAC protocol which is based on the popular DCF mechanism. This simple yet efficient scheme illustrates a new paradigm for realistic medium access control protocol design for next generation wireless networks. We have evaluated the performance of the proposed protocol by extensive simulations in different scenarios of wireless networks. Simulation results show that the new protocol significantly improves the network performance in terms of throughput and medium access delay.