A Novel Performance Analysis of the IEEE 802 . 11 DCF in the presence of Hidden Stations

IEEE 802.11 is the most popular standard used in WLAN. Distributed Coordination Function (DCF) is one of the channel-access methods in the IEEE 802.11 Medium Access Control (MAC) protocol. However, It has not been adequately studied under the existence of hidden stations. In the paper, we present the novel saturated throughput analysis of the IEEE 802.11 DCF in the presence of hidden stations. This approach involves a novel analytical model that is an extension to previous works by other authors which provide Markov chain analysis to IEEE 802.11 DCF. The throughput analysis of our model is evaluated by comparision with NS2 simulations and found the model is accurate and suitable for both basic access and request-to-send/clear-to-send (RTS/CTS) access mechanisms.