A performance analysis of MAC and PHY layers in IEEE 802.11ac wireless network

This paper gives an insight into IEEE 802.11ac by analysing its performance in terms of system throughput taking into consideration the key features of MAC and PHY layers. Throughput at MAC layer is calculated from transmission probability, contention window and transmission stage. Likewise, the new critical attributes of 802.11ac PHY (i.e. modulation and coding schemes, spatial streams, and channel bandwidth) are used to determine the throughput. To this end, a theoretical model is developed followed by simulation analysis. The results compare theoretical and simulation findings for different set of parameters. Furthermore, important trends and tradeoffs are identified between system throughput and (MAC + PHY) features as a function of number of contending stations and payload size.