FFD: A Fragmentation-based Full-Duplex MAC Protocol for Asymmetric IEEE 802.11 WLANs

In-band full-duplex (IBFD) technology allows a wireless device transmitting and receiving packets at the same time and on the same frequency. The advantage of using IBFD in wireless local area networks (WLANs) is to increase channel utilization and therefore achieve higher throughput. However, due to the asymmetric hardware capability and DATA length between AP and stations, the channel wastage problem and collision problem may happen, which will degrade network throughput. As a result, a Fragmentation-based Full-Duplex MAC protocol, named FFD MAC, is proposed in the paper. FFD cannot only enhance the channel utilization but also increase network throughput for asymmetric IBFD WLANs. Simulation results conducted by OMNET++ simulator show that FFD MAC performs much better than the related work in terms of network throughput as well as the transmission delay.