Performance Enhancement of WLAN by Buffer Size Optimization using OPNET

Wireless local area networks (WLANs) provide mobility and convenience to users, Communications may be cut off when mobile stations travel between cells. Wireless data connections have high bit error rates, low bandwidth and long delays. Therefore, it is very important to improve their loss performance. In this paper, our main contribution is to analyze and evaluate the throughput performance of WLANs. We describe OPNET implementations for finetuning the IEEE 802.11 layer related parameters. Through simulation we demonstrate that WLAN performance can be improved by tuning parameters such as buffer size, fragmentation threshold and request to send (RTS) thresholds. In this paper we emphasize on buffer size parameter. Customizing this parameter opposes to using the values specified in the standards will reduce delays, increase throughput and reduce load on nodes. Then finally the results are compiled to improve the performance of wireless local area networks. KeywordsWLAN, OPNET, Delay, Throughput, Load