According to the ongoing IEEE 802.11ac amendment, the wireless network is about to embrace the\r\ngigabit-per-second raw data rate. Compared with previous IEEE standards, this significant performance improvement\r\ncan be attributed to the novel physical and medium access control (MAC) features, such as multi-user multiple-input\r\nmultiple-output transmissions, the frame aggregation, and the channel bonding. In this paper, we first briefly survey\r\nthe main features of IEEE 802.11ac, and then, we evaluate these new features in a fully connected wireless mesh\r\nnetwork using an analytic model and simulations. More specifically, the performance of the MAC scheme defined by\r\nIEEE 802.11ac, which employs the explicit compressed feedback (ECFB) mechanism for the channel sounding, is\r\nevaluated. In addition, we propose an extended request-to-send/clear-to-send scheme that integrates the ECFB\r\noperation to compare with the IEEE 802.11ac-defined one in saturated conditions. The comparison of the two MAC\r\nschemes is conducted through three spatial stream allocation algorithms. A simple but accurate analytical model is\r\nderived for the two MAC schemes, the results of which are validated with simulations. The observations of the results\r\nnot only reveal the importance of spatial stream allocations but also provide insight into how the newly introduced\r\nfeatures could affect the performance of IEEE 802.11ac-based wireless mesh networks.
Loading....