Throughput and delay limits of IEEE 802.11

Abstract

The IEEE 802.11 protocol family provides up to 54-Mbps data rate, whereas the industry is seeking higher data rates. This paper shows that a theoretical throughput upper limit and a theoretical delay lower limit exist for the IEEE 802.11 protocols. The existence of such limits indicates that by simply increasing the data rate without reducing overhead, the enhanced performance, in terms of throughput and delay, is bounded even when the data rate goes into infinitely high. Reducing overhead is vital for good performance.