Performance Analysis of IEEE 802.11n MAC Enhancements over Block Fading Channels

Assuming a Nakagami-m block fading channel, we derive a theoretical medium access control (MAC) and physical (PHY) cross-layer model to estimate the saturation net throughput of IEEE 802.11 wireless local area networks (WLANs) with MAC enhancements. It is analytically shown that these MAC improvements, that consist of modifications of the plain IEEE 802.11 distribution coordination function (DCF) MAC protocol in order to support concatenation and multiframe transmission techniques, allow a substantial improvement of the net throughput.