Achievable MAximum Throughput and Coverage Range of Wireless LANs

It is observed that the data rates specified for the various Wireless LAN (WLAN) standards do not reflect the true throughput available to the user. Also, the carrier sense multiple access with collision avoidance (CSMA/CA) medium access control (MAC) protocol implementation of IEEE 802.11b has good distance coverage scope. This paper addresses these two issues of WLANs and computes the achievable maximum throughput and the range coverage. The computations are performed over the IEEE 802.11b standard, but can be extended to other WLAN standards as well.