The impact of MAC layer parameters in system performance of 802.11ac multi-hop networks

Abstract

The effect of two important MAC parameters on performance of IEEE 802.11ac and 802.11n based wireless local area networks (WLANs) have been investigated experimentally. In the first experiment set-up, effects of Request to Send/Clear to Send (RTS/CTS) packets on throughput performance are observed according to the number of hops. In the second set-up, the impact of A-MPDU technique on throughput performance is observed by using single and multi hop transmissions. The impact of the A-MPDU technique on throughput performance in 802.11ac based WLANs is more significant than 802.11n networks. Furthermore, the impact of AMPDU technique can be significant in a single hop transmission, but increasing number of hops transmission decrease A-MDPU effects. Considering the disadvantage of using A-MDPU (i.e. packet waiting delay), it may not be used in multihop transmission. Finally, using RTS thresholds, RTS/CTS packets do not affect the throughput significantly. However, as the RTS threshold increases, the RTS/CTS packet exchange will significantly effect the performance.