IEEE 802.11 Wireless LAN Standard Performance Viewpoint

Abstract

Public interest in IEEE 802.11 wireless LAN (WLAN) has begun to increase tremendously recently, years after the original standard has been introduced. WLAN hotpots based on IEEE 802.11 standard are popping up offering Internet connectivity at office-like speeds. Many vendors offer enterprise solutions that include Voice-over-IP and data integration based on IEEE 802.11 technology. Significant standards work in IEEE 802.11 is ongoing to address various issues such as power savings, Quality of Service (QoS), high-speed service, etc. The medium access scheme used by the IEEE 802.11 standard has been known for decades and is a derivative of a more famous predecessor, the IEEE 802.3 or Ethernet. Still, the radio environment poses challenges that continue to interest both the industry and academia. In this presentation we address performance aspect of the protocol in terms of capacity and throughput of a single Access Point 802.11 system employing Distributed Coordination Function (DCF), the mandatory medium access control scheme. The presentation will contain both the overview as well as recent original work on the performance under saturation condition.

Biography

Ivan Vukovic is a Distinguished Member of Technical Staff at the Network Advance Technology group of Network Business, Motorola Inc. He has graduated from University of Belgrade with a B.S. in Electrical Engineering (5-year degree) and from Rensselaer Polytechnic Institute (RPI) with a PhD degree from the Electrical, Computer and System Engineering (ECSE) Department. Dr. Vukovic has over 10 years experience in the area of Wireless Data and Cellular Systems design and performance analysis. He has worked on several cellular standards including CDMA2000 1X, CDMA2000 1xEV-DO Rel.0, Rel.A and UMTS as well as several WLAN standards such as IEEE 802.11 and ETSI Hiperlan. Additionally, he analyzed Motorola’s Canopy system making recommendations in the area of performance and algorithms. His current focus is on VoIP over cellular, especially CDMA2000 1x EV-DO Rev.A, as well as 4G systems (Canvas and IEEE 802.16). His interests are in IP end-to-end protocols, MAC protocols, admission control, scheduling and QoS. He has 2 issued U.S. patents.