A New EIFS Strategy for Performance Improvement of IEEE 802.11 Wireless LANs

In this paper, we propose a new EIFS strategy to improve the performance in IEEE 802.11. In IEEE 802.11 specifications, the EIFS time delay is activated after a node initiates an unsuccessful transmission. The new EIFS strategy uses the same activation mechanism as the specifications. The major difference between the standard EIFS and the new EIFS strategy is when to deactivate such time delay. According to the specification, a node deactivates the EIFS time delay whenever any node in system executes a successful transmission. However, in our proposed EIFS strategy, a node deactivates the EIFS time delay only when it has completed a successful transmission. Performance results via simulations have shown that this new strategy is able to boost the system performance significantly.