Comparison of IEEE 802.3 & IEEE802.11 MAC Protocol EEET1149 LOCAL AND METROPOLITAN AREA NETWORKS LECTURER:

The IEEE 802.3 and 802.11 standards are used to define CSMA/CD (Carrier Sense Multiple Access with Collision Detection) based on the Ethernet LAN (Local Area Networks) and Wireless LAN (WLAN) protocol, respectively. This report deals with the comparison of IEEE 802.3 and IEEE802.11 MAC protocol in terms of the physical and medium access control (MAC) layer. CSMA/CD Ethernet-based protocol is the most widely used for LAN and wireless standard seems to be used for mobile LAN applications provides more flexible/mobile and less expensive than wired LANs, but generally has a lower transmission rate than Ethernet LANs. In terms of access techniques, the report describes the IEEE 802.3 CSMA/CD Ethernet-based LAN. Basically, CSMA/CD is the improvement of CSMA protocol by adding collision detection scheme and becomes popular scheme for controlling a LAN specifically on a bus system. On the other hand, the access technique used by the IEEE 802.11 Wireless LAN protocol is CSMA/CA (Carrier Sense Multiple Access with Collision Avoidance) since the use of CSMA/CD implementation is not possible due to the waste of the energy on mobiles.