This letter presents a model with queueing theory to analyze the performance of non-saturated IEEE 802.11 DCF networks. We use the closed queueing network model and derive an approximate representation of throughput which can reveal the relationship between the throughput and the total offered load under finite traffic load conditions. The accuracy of the model is verified by extensive simulations.

The IEEE 802.11 standard has been extensively deployed all over the world. Many studies have been put on its performance, especially throughput. Most research focused on the analysis of saturated throughput, but non-saturated situation is more usual in practice. By extending a saturation throughput model, a concise and novel model is proposed in this paper, which can be used to analyze both saturated and non-saturated conditions. Moreover, the model can also deal with the heterogeneous condition, which allows stations to have different traffic. Different access mechanisms and packet payloads are used in simulation to validate it, and the results show that the model is accurate.

We analytically prove that the error in the channel idle time-based collision probability estimation in face of non-saturated stations is bounded by 2/(CWmin+1) in the IEEE 802.11 wireless LANs (WLANs). This work explicitly quantifies the impact of non-saturation, and the result vindicates the use of the estimation technique in real-life IEEE 802.11 WLANs, in such applications as the acknowledgement-based link adaptation and the throughput optimization through contention window size adaptation.

This letter presents a simple but accurate analytical model to evaluate the throughput of IEEE 802.11 distributed coordination function in non-saturated conditions. The influence of offered load on the throughput of both basic and RTS/CTS access mechanisms are analyzed and compared. It's shown that basic access scheme can achieve the same maximal throughput as that of RTS/CTS mechanism in non-saturated conditions while the latter is robust to the number of contending stations compared to basic mechanism. The analytical results are validated by extensive simulations.