Performance analysis of WLANs: an integrated packet/flow level approach

We present an integrated packet/flow level model for WLAN performance analysis. It captures the statistical characteristics of the transmission of individual packets at the MAC layer, and includes the system dynamics due to the initiation and completion of data flow transfers. The processor sharing-based model is analytically tractable and yields a simple approximation for the expected flow transfer time. Extensive simulations show that the approximation is very accurate for a wide range of parameter settings