The IEEE 802.11 standard specifies Wireless Local Area Networks (WLANs).
It supports both basic access mechanism and four way hand shaking mechanism.
IEEE 802.11 MAC specifies Distributed Coordination Function (DCF) and Point Coordination Function (PCF).
PCF supports real time traffic which is not suitable for IEEE 802.11 based multihop networks.
Multihop network opens the door for the researchers in the area of MAC protocol design.
IEEE 802.11 based multihop network exhibits channel capture in which the connection with strong SNR (above the defined capture threshold value) can capture the channel.
MAC layer throughput influences the network layer throughput.
Packet dropping in the MAC layer causes the routing discovery in the network layer.
The capacity of the multihop network is limited by the hidden nodes and the carrier sensing.
The transmission range and the carrier sensing range are fixed for the radio channel but the interference range varies with respect to the physical layer technique and the distance between the source and the destination.
In multihop network, some stations are source stations and some stations are relaying stations i.e. intermediate stations in the packet transmission.