An evaluation scheme of cell throughput for multi-rate wireless LAN systems with CSMA/CA

The paper proposes a new scheme that can evaluate the cell throughput performance of wireless local area network (LAN) systems that use the carrier sense multiple access/collision avoidance (CSMA/CA) and multiple transmission bit-rate (multi-rate) techniques. We use the proposed scheme to evaluate the IEEE 802.11a system and systems whose signal-bandwidth is expanded from that of the IEEE 802.11a system. We find that a system with 35(75) MHz signal-bandwidth achieves about 1.3(1.25) times higher cell throughput than the IEEE 802.11a system. Furthermore, the system with 35(75) MHz signal-bandwidth is also shown to have the potential to achieve up to 1.5(1.8) times higher cell throughput performance than the IEEE 802.11a system if the transmission efficiency on the media access control (MAC) layer is improved. The proposed scheme confirms that the approach of expanding the signal bandwidth of the IEEE 802.11a system is effective in improving the cell throughput performance. This result is virtually impossible to derive with the conventional scheme.