Improving WLAN Performance With Enhanced MAC, Node Cooperation and Two-Stage FEC Scheme

Signal interference, route disruption, congestion and fluctuations cause several consecutive bits arriving at the receiver in error. The error handling method in tradition communication protocols is error detection and retransmission. This method is inappropriate for distributed multimedia systems for two reasons: It introduces variable delay unacceptable for isochronous streams, and it is very inefficient and difficult to use in the multicast environment typical for many multimedia applications. The authors propose Enhanced MAC Node Cooperation with Two-Stage Forward Error Correction Scheme to be used on WLANs. The proposed scheme enables the joint optimization of protection strategies across the protocol stack. Node cooperation technique improves networks' overall system throughput and reliability, reduces the cost of retransmission and energy consumption.