A Scheme for Supporting Voice over IEEE 802.11 Wireless Local Area Network

Along with the widespread use of the Internet has come a considerable increase in the variety of applications being tried out, one of the most promising of which is packet telephony. Meanwhile, with the spread of the wireless local area network (WLAN) environment, there is growing demand for support for real-time traffic over WLAN. In this paper, we propose a modified MAC protocol that supports voice traffic over the IEEE 802.11 WLAN. The proposed scheme adapts the power-saving (PS) mode of the IEEE 802.11 specifications such that it rivals the TDMA mode in carrying real-time traffic and is compatible with the IEEE 802.11 standard. Simulation results obtained for the proposed scheme show that it does not degrade the performance of CSMA/CA, i.e., the contention mode of IEEE 802.11, and that it provides good voice quality for WLAN.