Research Article
Research on a MAC Protocol for IEEE 802.11 WLANs Based on a Virtual In-Band Channel Reservation Mechanism
@INPROCEEDINGS{10.1007/978-3-032-34048-1_9, author={Li Jiayi}, title={Research on a MAC Protocol for IEEE 802.11 WLANs Based on a Virtual In-Band Channel Reservation Mechanism}, proceedings={Smart Grid and Internet of Things. 9th EAI International Conference, SGIoT 2025, Taichung, Taiwan, December 6--7, 2025, Proceedings}, proceedings_a={SGIOT}, year={2026}, month={10}, keywords={IEEE 802.11 standard MAC protocol channel reservation}, doi={10.1007/978-3-032-34048-1_9} }- Li Jiayi
Year: 2026
Research on a MAC Protocol for IEEE 802.11 WLANs Based on a Virtual In-Band Channel Reservation Mechanism
SGIOT
Springer
DOI: 10.1007/978-3-032-34048-1_9
Abstract
Nowadays, wireless local area network (WLAN) technology based on the IEEE 802.11 standard becomes one of the most widely deployed wireless communication technologies. Its core access mechanism is the so-called carrier-sense multiple access with collision avoidance (CSMA/CA). However, the absence of a centralized coordination mechanism in CSMA/CA makes packet collisions among nodes difficult to be avoided, which in turn becomes a primary cause of throughput degradation in the network. To mitigate collisions, some medium access control (MAC) protocols based on in-band channel reservation mechanisms have been proposed. However, existing in-band reservation MAC protocols generally fail to address the problem of the interruption of reservation chains, which is caused by the intermittent and bursty arrivals of packets at a sending node. To address this issue, a MAC protocol for IEEE 802.11 WLANs based on a virtual in-band channel reservation (VIBCR) mechanism is proposed in the paper. By introducing the notion of VIBCR, the proposed protocol can effectively prevent the interruption of reservation chains in sending nodes. Simulation results show that, compared with conventional in-band reservation schemes, the proposed VIBCR method can significantly reduce the occurrence of interruptions of reservation chains, thereby lowering the average failure probability of packet transmissions among nodes and the average transmission delay.