Analysis of Non-Saturation and Saturation Performance of IEEE 802.11 DCF in the Presence of Hidden Stations

In this paper, we propose an analytical model to evaluate the hidden station effect on both non-saturation and saturation performance of the IEEE 802.11 Distributed Coordination Function (DCF). DCF is a random channel-access scheme based on Carrier Sense Multiple Access with Collision Avoidance (CSMACA) method and the binary slotted exponential backoff procedure to reduce the packet collision. Hidden stations cause most collisions because stations cannot sense each other's transmission and often send packets concurrently, resulting in significant degradation of the network performance. The proposed model generalizes the existing work on 802.11 DCF performance modeling for both non-saturation and saturation conditions, under the hidden-station effect. The performance of our model is evaluated by comparison with NS-2 simulations and found to agree with the analytic model.