Calculating voice capacity in IEEE 802.11 WLANs under basic access data traffic

In recent years, the growth of Wireless Local Area Networks (WLANs) is enormous. Supporting voice applications over WLANs is of great interest in scientific and technical community. In this paper an analytical model is developed, based on a Markov chain, for the calculation of saturation throughput and average packet delay for IEEE 802.11 WLANs. A hybrid network scenario is studied with voice stations and data stations competing for the medium. Both data and voice stations use the Basic mechanism of DCF (Distributed Coordination Function). Analytical model is validated by comparing its results with simulation outcome. The analytical model developed in this work is simple, fast, easily implemented and gives accurate results. A methodology for calculating voice capacity for the hybrid scenario is developed.