Performance Improvement Using Three Operation Modes in IEEE 802.11 DCF WLANs

Abstract

We propose three operation modes, namely, DCF uplink, Downlink, and CTS uplink modes to solve the unfairness problem between uplink and downlink as well as improve the performance of delay and throughput. The proposed scheme only requires modifying AP's functionalities without any changes of STAs, and is fully backward compatible to the legacy DCF. Its analytical result is validated against simulation and performance evaluation shows the proposed scheme is superior to the traditional IEEE 802.11 WLAN.