Modeling of WLAN Channel Access Mechanism Under the Influence of Hidden Nodes
Haopeng Zhou · 2025
Wireless Local Area Network is a widely used wireless communication service in daily life. To avoid channel conflicts, WLAN employs the Distributed Coordination Function to provide competition-based channel access. The modeling of multiple Basic Service Sets in WLAN networking is one of the hot research topics in this field. This study explores the modeling and performance analysis of channel access mechanisms in a multiple BSS environment, with particular attention to the impact of hidden nodes and co-channel interference on system throughput. We base our work on the Bianchi model, constructing a two-dimensional Markov model to describe the backoff random process of a single AP node, and utilize time slot division to analyze the channel state. Finally, we establish a high-order nonlinear equation and use the relaxation Newton method to solve for the steady-state probability to assess the system throughput. The results show that in multiple BSS scenarios, the effects of node hearing and hidden nodes significantly reduce the total system throughput, identifying key factors for improving throughput. The innovation of this paper lies in the introduction of the concept of time slot division, providing a new perspective for modeling channel access mechanisms in a multiple BSS environment.