PR-MAC: A Practical Approach for Exploiting Relay Transmissions in Multi-Rate WLANs

Abstract

In this paper, we propose a new MAC protocol, called proxy relay-enabled MAC (PR-MAC), to improve the capacity of multi-rate WLANs. PR-MAC introduces a new entity called Proxy Relay Point (PRP), which serves as a relay between the AP and stations. The cooperation of the AP with PRP replaces direct transmissions for low-rate stations with fast two-hop transmissions while the stations think that they communicate directly with the AP. Our experiment and simulation results showed that PR-MAC can significantly improve the throughput of legacy stations without any modification on the MAC operation of the stations.