IEEE 802.11-Saturation Throughput Analysis

To satisfy the emerging need of wireless data communications, IEEE is currently standardizing the 802.11 protocol for wireless local area networks. This standard adopts a CSMA/CA medium access control protocol with exponential backoff. In this letter, we present a simple analytical model to compute the saturation throughput performance in the presence of a finite number of terminals and in the assumption of ideal channel conditions. The model applies to both basic and RTS/CTS access mechanisms. Comparison with simulation results shows that the model is extremely accurate in predicting the system throughput.