Stochastic Analysis of IEEE 802.11

IEEE 802.11 WLANs (commonly known as WiFi) have gained widespread success and popularity over the past decade. The fundamental component of an IEEE 802.11 WLAN is the Basic Service Set (BSS) - the equivalent of a ¿cell¿ in cellular networks. A BSS contains one or more wireless stations, such as computers or mobile phones, and an access point (AP) cabled to the wired backbone network to allow the wireless stations access to the Internet. The BSSs represent an ¿infrastructure mode¿.The IEEE 802.11 MAC layer defines two types of mechanisms: a mandatory Distributed Coordination Function (DCF) and an optional Point Coordination Function (PCF). PCF is a centralized scheme that provides contention-free channel access but is rarely implemented. DCF is the fundamental MAC protocol of the IEEE 802.11 based WLAN standard. It adopts the CSMA/CA with Binary Exponential Backoff (BEB) algorithm, along with two access mechanisms, a two-way handshaking scheme called basic access and a four-way handshaking scheme called request-to-send/clear-to-send (RTS/CTS) access.