Error Bound of Collision Probability Estimation in Non-Saturated IEEE 802.11 WLANs

The authors 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. In the IEEE 802.11 Wireless LAN (WLAN), it is useful to precisely determine the probability of collision Pc in a transmission failure event.