Opportunities of MIM capture in IEEE 802.11 WLANs: analytic study

Physical layer capture in WLANs makes a receiver to decode a relatively strong packet in a collision. According to recent works, an augmented physical layer capture handles interference better and facilitates more concurrent transmissions. This newly discovered physical layer capability is called Message in Message (MIM). It is a well-known fact that MIM capture capability can improve the throughput of wireless network. The MIM capture, however, only happens when a later packet has higher SINR (>=10dB). Furthermore, how likely MIM capture will happen has not been analyzed precisely. This paper analyzes that how likely such a MIM capture condition will take place in varying geometrical locations of nodes. It is the first analytical approach towards quantifying possibilities of performance gain from exploiting MIM capture capability in IEEE 802.11 WLANs. The result from our analysis shows that MIM capture and physical layer capture combined has maximum of 40% probability of occurrence. Moreover, we introduce several applications that harness MIM capture capability such as AP Placement Problem, AP Power Control, and Opportunistic Concurrent Transmission.