ARP-like direct link transmission scheme in WLAN

IEEE 802.11 is the most wide-spread standard for wireless LAN due to easy installation and low cost. Most of the WLAN established around the world are working on infrastructure mode. In such mode, there exists an access point (AP) to be a portal to the Internet for wireless users in its coverage. For communications inside a cell, the infrastructure mode is not an efficient way for data transmission. When the number of traffics increases in the WLAN, the contention for accessing the channel makes the system throughput degrade dramatically. How to improve the effectiveness of bandwidth utilization is always one of the most important issues in wireless communications. A better way would be setting up a direct link connection for transmissions between non-hidden stations. In this paper, we refer to Address Resolution Protocol (ARP) and propose a simple new scheme, called ARP-like Direct Link Transmission scheme, to set up direct link connections among non-hidden stations in the same cell. The proposed scheme can effectively improve the overall system throughput and reduce the delay and jitter as shown in the simulation results.