DCF, PCF, Time, and Power Management
CSMA/CA is the basic method by which wireless STAs share access to the medium. IEEE 802.11's medium access protocol was designed to tolerate frame loss due to interference (which could come from any number of sources…misbehaving or hidden IEEE 802.11 stations, 2.4 GHz cordless phones, garage door openers, Bluetooth devices, microwave ovens, lightning, etc.). Interference is a much more common phenomenon in the wireless domain; if design accommodations were not made, the throughput of the IEEE 802.11 MAC might have been significantly limited.
Wireless versus Wired MAC Protocol Design Differences
Many readers are probably familiar with CSMA/CD, which was the algorithm that was defined for the initial shared-access ...
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