MAC protocol for optimal Multipacket Reception in WLANs

Conventional medium access control (MAC) protocols of wireless local area networks (WLANs) have been designed based on the assumption that only a single packet can be received successfully at a time. However, the deployment of multiple antennas in WLANs makes it possible to receive multiple packets simultaneously. As a result, the design of new MAC protocol should take the multipacket reception (MPR) capability into consideration. In this paper, we propose a MAC protocol with consideration of the optimal number of simultaneous transmissions for WLANs with MPR capability. The proposed MAC protocol follows the 802.11 Distributed Coordination Function (DCF) with Request-to-Send/Clear –to-Send (RTS/CTS) exchange mode, but there is a modification in the CTS and ACK packets. We also derive the throughput equation of our proposed MAC protocol. Simulation results show that our proposed protocol outperforms convention protocols, and achieves a large throughput enhancement