A capacity effect of bridging functionality applied to wireless packet datalink

Abstract

This paper calculates the capacity efficiency of various data link methods in wireless LAN communications. For LAN communications, the packet reachability between mobile stations within the same cell should be guaranteed, as intracell communication is important. In order to realize this, we have proposed a bridging functionality which automatically transfers the packet at an access point when the source cannot send the packet to destination directly. The theoretical capacity efficiency is calculated and compared against other methods, non-bridging (i.e., direct communications) and full-time bridging (i.e., the access point always bridges data). The evaluation results show that the proposed method is always efficient.