A TCP-like Adaptive Contention Window Scheme for WLAN

This paper proposes and investigates a simple selfadaptive contention window adjustment algorithm for 802.11 WLAN. We present simulation and analytical results showing that the new algorithm outperforms the standard 802.11 window adjustment algorithm. Compared with the standard and previously proposed enhancement algorithms, a salient feature of our algorithm is that it performs well both when the number of active stations is large and small – that is, in both heavy and light contention cases. Furthermore, the adaptive window adjustment algorithm is simpler than previously proposed enhancement schemes in that no live measurement of the WLAN traffic activity is needed.