An analysis of the backoff mechanism used in IEEE 802.11 networks

This paper presents a simulation analysis of the backoff mechanism presented in the IEEE 802.11 standard. The obtained simulations allow us to determine the effective throughput and the mean packet delay versus offered load for different values of the contention window parameter and the number of contending stations. The choice of the CWmin and CWmax parameters was analyzed. In particular, the choice of CWmin value in dependence of the number of transmitting stations was presented. The simulation results show that the proper choice of the CW parameters has a substantial influence on the network performance.