Performance Analysis of the IEEE 802.11 Distributed Coordination Function with unicast and broadcast traffic

Abstract:        Most studies on performance of IEEE 802.11 DCF networks do not contemplate the existence of broadcast traffic. They model network behaviour in presence of unicast traffic alone. In a real scenario, broadcast frames exist, and they will influence the overall network behaviour. This work presents a new traffic generalized model for CSMA/CA saturated single-hop networks able to describe the network behaviour in presence of both unicast and broadcast frames. Interesting statistics like station transmission probability, average time needed to complete a frame transmission, and network aggregate throughput are deduced from the model. The paper compares the performance of our model with other models proposed only for unicast traffic. Our model is validated for broadcast and unicast traffic through simulations, using an IEEE 802.11 DCF network scenario. Results are presented and analysed for different scenarios of broadcast/unicast network loads, different number of nodes and different frame data lengths.