A New Backoff Algorithm for IEEE 802.11 Distributed Coordination Function

DCF (Distributed Coordination Function) of IEEE802.11 MAC protocols uses binary exponential increasing mechanism, called BEB (Binary Exponential Backoff) algorithm. Due to the lack of a mechanism evaluating the channel condition, it can not tune the value of contention windows adaptively, according to the actual network traffic. By introducing the network allocation vector count in routing protocol to approximate the intensity of surrounding traffic of nodes, the algorithm has been improved, so that the contention windows of backoff mechanism are adjusted reasonably according to the traffic of WLAN. Simulation experiments are done and the results prove that the improved algorithm provides a better channel utilization and reduces the average transmission delay.