A MAC protocol, useful for wireless local area networks (WLANs), is provided for improving throughput efficiency. The protocol includes three concurrent processes, and the channel is divided into a contention subchannel and a transmission subchannel. In the contention process, all nodes use the standard RTS/CTS mechanism operated on the contention channel to contend for a right of transmission. When one node gains the right, all the nodes store the contention result into their respective contention queue (CQ) buffers. In the transmission process, the nodes sequentially transmit their data over the transmission channel according to the order of the nodes stored in the CQ buffers. When one node finishes data transmission, the CQ buffers are updated. The contention process and the transmission process are connected by the queuing process, where each node dynamically updates its own CQ buffer according to the contention result and each instance of data transmission.