ABSTRACT
The IEEE 802.11 protocol has become the predominant technology for wireless local area networks. The IEEE 802.11 wireless networks employ the distributed coordination function (DCF) as a primary medium access mechanism. It is based on carrier-sensing multiple-access with collision avoidance protocol. One of the most important elements of the 802.11 in terms of performance is the medium access control.This chapter discusses sequential Monte Carlo based algorithms that overcome both the problems accuracy and ease of implementation. It shows that the accuracy of the Bayesian algorithms is particularly good at small timescales, which makes the author'sproposal attractive to optimize the protocol when the competing terminals are in a nonsaturation regime. The chapter proposes an optimization mechanism that uses predictive distribution of number of competing terminals to adapt the parameters of the IEEE 802.11 DCF protocol and maximize its throughput. It has employed a powerful online algorithm to estimate the number of competing terminals, based on the sequential Monte Carlo method.
