IEEE 802.11e (EDCA) analysis in the presence of hidden stations

The key contribution of this paper is the combined analytical analysis of both saturated and non-saturated throughput of IEEE 802.11e networks in the presence of hidden stations. This approach is an extension to earlier works by other authors which provided Markov chain analysis to the IEEE 802.11 family under various assumptions. Our approach also modifies earlier expressions for the probability that a station transmits a packet in a vulnerable period. The numerical results provide the impact of the access categories on the channel throughput. Various throughput results under different mechanisms are presented.