The Impact of RTS Threshold on IEEE 802.11 MAC Protocol

[[abstract]]Wireless technologies and applications received great attention in recent years. The medium access control (MAC) protocol is the main element that determines the efficiency is sharing the limited communication bandwidth of the wireless channel in wireless local area networks (WLANs). The request-to-send/clear-to-send (RTS/CTS) mechanism is an optional handshaking procedure used by the IEEE 802 .11 wireless network to reduce the possibility of collision. The RTS_Threshold (RT) value which determines when the RTS/CTS handshaking mechanism should be used is an important parameter to investigate; since different RT values will produce difference performance characteristics in data transmission. This paper presents an analysis of the influence of the RT parameter on the IEEE 802.11 wireless network, and gives a guideline to dynamically adjust the RT value. Simulation results of this paper show that the RTS/CTS mechanism should be always turned on (RT=0) to achieve an excellent performance while saving complex work designing a dynamic RT mechanism which will not have notable effect.[[sponsorship]]中央大學; 教育部 IEEE Computer Society; National Central University; Ministry of Education, R.O.C.[[notice]]補正完畢[[conferencetype]]國際[[conferencedate]]20021217~20021220[[booktype]]紙本[[iscallforpapers]]Y[[conferencelocation]]桃園縣, 臺