Implementing a cooperative MAC protocol for wireless LANs

In wireless LANs that provide multi-rate support (IEEE 802.11a, 802.11b), stations that experience poor channel quality tend to use low transmission rates to reduce the bit-error-rate (BER) of each transmission. This phenomenon usually leads to a throughput fairness problem between the stations with good channel quality and those without. This fairness problem has been shown to result in throughput degradation for the whole network [8]. The MAC protocol proposed in [5] addresses this issue using an efficient cooperative scheme. Under this scheme, low rate stations are assisted by a high rate station, referred to as helper stations, in its transmissions. With such assistance, the low rate station will be able to transmit data at a higher rate in a two-hop manner using the helper station. We implemented this new protocol in a Linux testbed. This paper describes the assumptions, the implementation process and the challenges we were presented with. We evaluated the protocol using our testbed through experiments. The implementation of the protocol shows that it performs efficiently in supporting TCP applications.