Implementing Institute of Electrical and Electronics Engineers (IEEE) 802.11 Standard Medium Access Control Protocol for Wireless Local Area Networks (LANS) on a Laboratory Hardware Prototype

摘要

Wireless Local Area Networks (LANs) are extremely convenient, flexible, and easy to deploy. All LANs in which multiple hosts must access the same medium use a Medium Access Control (MAC) protocol to coordinate channel access. The MAC is part of the Data Link Layer of the Open Systems Interconnection (OSI) Reference Model. One MAC protocol in extensive use today is the Institute of Electrical and Electronics Engineers (IEEE) 802.11 standard. Since IEEE 802.11 devices are so prevalent in today s world, many researcher are exploring modifications and enhancements to the protocol. There are several well developed analytical and simulation models for IEEE 802.11 available to researchers, yet one significant obstacle remains: the lack of a means to obtain experimental data based on proposed protocol changes. Without real world experimental data, researchers lack the ability to test out their proposals in a real world environment. To fill this need, this thesis created a hardware prototype from which researchers can obtain experimental data about IEEE 802.11. This hardware prototype can now be used by researchers to gain real world data on their proposed modifications to IEEE 802.11.