Double sense multiple access for wireless ad hoc networks

In wireless ad hoc networks, the major quality of service (QoS) concern and challenge in the design and analysis of contention-based medium access control (MAC) protocols is to achieve good throughput and access delay performance in the presence of hidden terminals, which are defined as the terminals out of the radio coverage area of an intended transmitter but within that of the receiver. We propose and analyze in this paper a new dual-channel random access protocol, called “Double Sense Multiple Access” (DSMA), for improving QoS support in wireless ad hoc networks. By separating the transmissions of ready-to-send (RTS) and data packets into two time-slotted channels and by introducing a novel double sense mechanism, DSMA completely solves the hidden terminal problem and can guarantee the success transmission of data packets. By taking into account the most complex network scenario in which all transmitters are hidden terminals with respect to each other, key QoS metrics such as throughput, blocking probability and access delay are derived mathematically for the proposed DSMA protocol. These analytical results are verified by extensive computer simulations.     

Enhanced MAC protocol to support multimedia traffic in cognitive wireless mesh networks

With the advanced physical layer techniques such as multiple-input and multiple-output (MIMO) and orthogonal frequency-division multiplexing (OFDM), transmission real-time 2D/3D contents and applications becomes more and more necessary in wireless networks for the amazing growing in demand of customers. However, the low efficiency of medium access control (MAC) protocol degrades the performance of real-time traffic greatly in multihop, wireless and mobile environment. Focusing on supporting real-time multimedia traffic in cognitive wireless mesh networks (WMNs), an enhanced MAC protocol is proposed. And the contribution of this paper is twofold: (1) An efficient carrier sense multiple access with collision avoidance (CSMA/CA) compatible time division multiple access (TDMA)-like MAC protocol called T-MAC is proposed, which aims to improve the system performance by allocating more channel access time in centralized manner and decreasing overhead. (2) An optimal adaptive scheduling scheme is proposed to support real-time multimedia applications and guarantee QoS for different priority traffic, which aims to find the optimized schedule among all possible sequences of concurrent transmissions by minimizing the occupied resources. Detailed simulation results and comparison with IEEE 802.11e MAC scheme show that the proposed T-MAC can effectively improve quality of service (QoS) for multimedia traffic in terms of throughput, end-to-end delay and packet loss rate, which also manifests that T-MAC is an efficient multimedia applications transmission scheme for mobile terminals and MAPs in cognitive WMNs.     

Providing MAC QoS for multimedia traffic in 802.11e based multi-hop ad hoc wireless networks

Ad hoc wireless networks with their widespread deployment, now need to support applications that generate multimedia and real-time traffic. Video, audio, real-time voice over IP, and other multimedia applications require the network to provide guarantees on the Quality of Service (QoS) of the connection. The 802.11e Medium Access Control (MAC) protocol was proposed with the aim of providing QoS support at the MAC layer. The 802.11e performs well in wireless LANs due to the presence of Access Points (APs), but in ad hoc networks, especially multi-hop ones, it is still incapable of supporting multimedia traffic.One of the most important QoS parameters for multimedia and real-time traffic is delay. Our primary goal is to reduce the end-to-end delay, thereby improving the Packet Delivery Ratio of multimedia traffic, that is, the proportion of packets that reach the destination within the deadline, in 802.11e based multi-hop ad hoc wireless networks.Our contribution is threefold: first we propose dynamic ReAllocative Priority (ReAP) scheme, wherein the priorities of packets in the MAC queues are not fixed, but keep changing dynamically. We use the laxity and the hop length information to decide the priority of the packet. ReAP improves the PDR by over 28% in comparison with 802.11e, especially under heavy loads. Second, we introduce Adaptive-TXOP (A-TXOP), where transmission opportunity (TXOP) is the time interval during which a node has the right to initiate transmissions. This scheme reduces the delay of video traffic by reducing the number of channel accesses required to transmit large video frames. It involves modifying the TXOP interval dynamically based on the packets in the queue, so that fragments of the same packet are sent in the same TXOP interval. A-TXOP is implemented over ReAP to further improve the performance of video traffic. ReAP with A-TXOP helps in reducing the delay of video traffic by over 27% and further improves the quality of video in comparison with ReAP without A-TXOP. Finally, we have TXOP-sharing, which is aimed at reducing the delay of voice traffic. It involves using the TXOP to transmit to multiple receivers, in order to utilize the TXOP interval fully. It reduces the number of contentions to the channel and thereby reduces the delay of voice traffic by over 14%. A-TXOP is implemented over ReAP to further improve the performance of voice traffic. The three schemes (ReAP, A-TXOP, and TXOP-sharing) work together to improve the performance of multimedia traffic in 802.11e based multi-hop ad hoc wireless networks.     

A QoS Estimation-Based Scheduler for Real-Time Traffic in IEEE 802.11e Mobile Ad hoc Networks

ABSTRACT

For mobile ad hoc networks, the IEEE 802.11e standard specification provides Quality of Service (QoS) facility support in the MAC layer by Enhanced Distribution Channel Access (EDCA), which provides differentiated and distributed access to the wireless medium with four access categories (AC). It works efficiently for constant bit rate (CBR) types of traffic; however, for the case of variable bit rate (VBR) types of traffic, it shows poor performance due to the static nature of computing the number of packets and the time required to transmit these packets. In this paper, we present an EDCA scheduling algorithm that allocates transmission opportunities (TXOP) for fluctuating VBR traffic depending on their queue length estimations for mobile ad hoc networks. We classify the channel state as good or bad based on the channel error conditions. Then the scheduler determines the mean application data rate and estimates the TXOP for the next interval on the same Traffic Stream (TS). By simulation results, we show that the proposed scheduling scheme achieves good throughput and fairness with reduced delay for the VBR traffic class.     

A cross-layer elastic CAC and holistic opportunistic scheduling for QoS support in WiMAX

QoS provisioning is an important issue in the deployment of broadband wireless access networks with real-time and non-real-time traffic integration. An opportunistic MAC (OMAC) combines cross-layer design features with opportunistic scheduling scheme to achieve high system utilization while providing QoS support to various applications. A single scheduling algorithm cannot guarantee all the QoS requirements of traffics without the support of a suitable CAC and vice versa. In this paper, we propose a cross-layer MAC scheduling framework and a corresponding opportunistic scheduling algorithm in tandem with the CAC algorithm to support QoS in WiMAX point-to-multipoint (PMP) networks. Extensive experimental simulations have been carried out to evaluate the performance of our proposal. The simulation results show that our proposed solution can improve the performance of WiMAX networks in terms of packet delay, packet loss rate and throughput. The proposed CAC scheme can guarantee the admitted connections to meet their QoS requirements.     

Performance analysis of the TXOP burst transmission scheme in single-hop ad hoc networks with unbalanced stations

Transmission Opportunity (TXOP) is a promising burst transmission scheme defined in the IEEE 802.11e Medium Access Control (MAC) protocol to achieve differentiated Quality-of-Service (QoS) and improve the utilization of the scarce wireless bandwidth. Although performance modelling of the TXOP scheme has attracted tremendous research efforts from both the academia and industry, most existing analytical models have been developed under the unrealistic assumption that stations in wireless networks generate identical traffic loads. However, this assumption fails to capture the behaviour of wireless stations under the realistic working environment. To fill this gap, this paper proposes a new analytical model for the TXOP service differentiation scheme in single-hop ad hoc networks in the presence of unbalanced stations with different traffic loads. The QoS performance metrics including throughput, end-to-end delay, frame dropping probability, and energy consumption are derived. Extensive NS-2 simulation experiments are conducted to validate the accuracy of the developed model. The analytical results demonstrate the efficiency of the TXOP scheme for QoS differentiation and performance enhancement. Moreover, the analytical model is adopted as a cost-effective tool to investigate the impact of the buffer size and the number of stations on the performance of the TXOP scheme. The performance results show that the desirable throughput differentiation for different stations can be achieved by setting the appropriate TXOP limits.     

An efficient joint channel assignment and QoS routing protocol for IEEE 802.11 multi-radio multi-channel wireless mesh networks

With the emerging of video, voice over IP (VoIP) and other real-time multimedia services, more and more people pay attention to quality of service (QoS) issues in terms of the bandwidth, delay and jitter, etc. As one effective way of broadband wireless access, it has become imperative for wireless mesh networks (WMNs) to provide QoS guarantee. Existing works mostly modify QoS architecture dedicated for ad hoc or sensor networks, and focus on single radio and single channel case. Meanwhile, they study the QoS routing or MAC protocol from view of isolated layer. In this paper, we propose a novel cross-layer QoS-aware routing protocol on OLSR (CLQ-OLSR) to support real-time multimedia communication by efficiently exploiting multi-radio and multi-channel method. By constructing multi-layer virtual logical mapping over physical topology, we implement two sets of routing mechanisms, physical modified OLSR protocol (M-OLSR) and logical routing, to accommodate network traffic. The proposed CLQ-OLSR is based on a distributed bandwidth estimation scheme, implemented at each node for estimating the available bandwidth on each associated channel. By piggybacking the bandwidth information in HELLO and topology control (TC) messages, each node disseminates information of topology and available bandwidth to other nodes in the whole network in an efficient way. From topology and bandwidth information, the optimized path can be identified. Finally, we conduct extensive simulation to verify the performance of CLQ-OLSR in different scenarios on QualNet platform. The results demonstrate that our proposed CLQ-OLSR outperforms single radio OLSR, multi-radio OLSR and OLSR with differentiated services (DiffServ) in terms of network aggregate throughput, end-to-end packet delivery ratio, delay and delay jitter with reasonable message overheads and hardware costs. In particular, the network aggregate throughput for CLQ-OLSR can almost be improved by 300% compared with the single radio case.     

存在隐藏终端的IEEE802.11e多跳无线网络模型分析

首次将802.11e的接入机制放入多跳环境中进行仿真分析和定量研究。提出一种新的多跳环境下802.11e网络模型,结合M/G/1/K排队模型,定量分析在隐藏终端影响下802.11e网络的MAC层吞吐率、MAC时延和帧丢失率,研究802.11e在多跳环境下性能表现的内在原因。经过仿真实验结果与数值分析结果的对比,验证了分析模型的准确性;通过有(无)隐藏终端影响下MAC层性能的对比分析,指出了802.11e在多跳无线网络中支持QoS的局限性:受隐藏终端的影响,802.11e对不同接入等级的业务提供QoS区分的性能明显降级。因而有必要研究隐藏终端问题的解决方案,提高802.11e在多跳环境下的性能。     

存在隐藏终端的IEEE 802.11e多跳无线网络模型分析*

首次将802.11e的接入机制放入多跳环境中进行仿真分析和定量研究。提出一种新的多跳环境下802.11e网络模型,结合M/G/1/K排队模型,定量分析在隐藏终端影响下802.11e网络的MAC层吞吐率、MAC时延和帧丢失率,研究802.11e在多跳环境下性能表现的内在原因。经过仿真实验结果与数值分析结果的对比,验证了分析模型的准确性;通过有（无）隐藏终端影响下MAC层性能的对比分析,指出了802.11e在多跳无线网络中支持QoS的局限性：受隐藏终端的影响,802.11e对不同接入等级的业务提供QoS区分的性能明显降级。因而有必要研究隐藏终端问题的解决方案,提高802.11e在多跳环境下的性能。     

Efficient multimedia transmission using adaptive packet bursting for wireless LANs

In addition to an unprecedented 600 Mb/s physical data rate in upcoming standards with greater than 1 Gb/s being considered for future systems, 802.11 has evolved from its earlier incarnations to become a ubiquitous, high-throughput wireless access technology utilized in heterogeneous networks. Although capable of advanced QoS provisioning, commercial 802.11 implementations often support only a subset of QoS specifications, utilize manufacturer-specific QoS enhancements, or use sub-optimal MAC reference specifications with limited capability in achieving optimal system throughput and QoS provisioning.Although more efficient ARQ modes have been defined in the 802.11e and imminent 802.11n amendment standards, opportunities exist within this framework for further optimization through dynamic adaptation of key ARQ-related parameters, which is out of scope of current 802.11 standard specifications. Considering such opportunities, this article presents a novel adaptive ARQ scheme designed to improve the quality and reliability of multimedia transmission through the real-time adaptation of the maximum packet burst size and actual ARQ mode employed. Comprehensive simulation studies show that this scheme can potentially improve the QoS and throughput performance of multimedia traffic in both existing and future 802.11 wireless LANs.     

一种无线网络中有效的MAC层信道竞争方案

在研究IEEE802．11DCF的基础上．提出了一种简单有效的无线局域网MAC层冲突解决机制（PBCR）．主要通过均匀分布站点的退避计数器值来达到减少冲突的目的．建模的计算结果和仿真的统计结果都表明PBCR在性能上，包括吞吐量，公平因子以及发送延迟等方面比DCF有显著的提高．     

一种基于IEEE802.11的无线自组网MAC协议

基于IEEE802.11DCF提出了一种应用于无线自组网的媒质接入控制协议，该协议包括网络适应性退避算法和拥塞反馈两个关键机制。协议的主要思想是根据节点周围实际竞争状况和网络拥塞情况进行包调度。仿真结果表明，提出的机制有效地降低了平均端到端时延和数据丢包率,提高了信道接入公平性。     

无线Mesh网中具有QoS保障的MAC算法

(中南民族大学电子信息工程学院,武汉 430074)     

An adaptive QoS guaranteeing MAC protocol for real-time traffic in TDMA-based wireless ATM networks

This paper presents a new media access control (MAC) protocol based on forward error control (FEC), which is appropriate for supporting real-time traffic with strict QoS requirements in wireless ATM networks. As the channel BER in wireless environments is very high and varying 10⁻⁵–10⁻², previous schemes that use powerful FEC have combated to overcome this noisy channel condition at the cost of valuable bandwidth. As most previous works have been dedicated to maximize the channel efficiency, they were not able to meet QoS requirements of real-time applications in wireless networks. A new MAC protocol proposed in this paper is designed to guarantee the throughput requested by a real-time traffic user while keeping the bandwidth consumption at a minimum. The proposed scheme is for a TDMA system and uses adaptive FEC. We analyze the wireless channel and model it as a two-state error control system to design an efficient MAC protocol. We use simulation experiments to show how the proposed scheme provides QoS guarantees, and compare it with the CDMA system in terms of capacity, i.e. the number of users that can be supported.     

无线网络中实时业务的信道预留

随着无线数据服务的流行和多媒体应用需求的增长,需要无线网络能够为不同种类的业务提供有区别的服务质量(QoS),因此如何在无线网络中提供有区分和有保证的服务质量,成为一个非常重要的问题。论文提出了一种在IEEE802.11无线网络中为实时业务提供服务质量保证的有效方法,即通过修改介质访问控制(MAC)层的分布式协调功能(DCF),为实时数据预留信道。当一个节点竞争到信道后,可以连续向同一个目标节点发送多个实时数据帧,称作传送突发(TB,TransmissionBurst),即在一个TB中第一个数据帧将为实时业务预留信道,直到这个TB结束,这样实时业务将比其他业务占有更多的信道资源。仿真结果表明,该方法能够明显改进实时业务的吞吐率和延迟性能,提高无线网络的信道利用率,而且,对DCF的修改没有增加任何控制开销。     

Channel time allocation scheme based on feedback information in IEEE 802.11e wireless LANs

The IEEE 802.11e standard defines a set of quality of service (QoS) enhancements for wireless local area network (WLAN) applications such as voice and streaming multimedia traffic. In the standard, a new medium access control (MAC) protocol is called the hybrid coordinator function (HCF), and also a channel access scheme to transmit multimedia traffic is called the HCF controlled channel access (HCCA). In the IEEE 802.11e WLANs, to satisfy the stringent real-time constraints of multimedia services it is very important to provide an efficient method of allocating network resources. In this regard, we propose a feedback-assisted dynamic channel time allocation scheme considering the application layer information in order to achieve better performance of multimedia traffic over IEEE 802.11e HCCA under the constrained QoS requirements. Performance of the proposed scheme is investigated by simulation. Our results show that under typical channel error conditions, the proposed scheme is very effective regardless of the variation of station numbers and service intervals. Also, it yields high performances while guaranteeing the delay bound.     

A multirate MAC protocol for reliable multicast in multihop wireless networks

Many multicast applications, such as audio/video streaming, file sharing or emergency reporting, are becoming quite common in wireless mobile environment, through the widespread deployment of 802.11-based wireless networks. However, despite the growing interest in the above applications, the current IEEE 802.11 standard does not offer any medium access control (MAC) layer support to the efficient and reliable provision of multicast services. It does not provide any MAC-layer recovery mechanism for unsuccessful multicast transmissions. Consequently, lost frames cannot be detected, hence retransmitted, causing a significant quality of service degradation. In addition, 802.11 multicast traffic is sent at the basic data rate, often resulting in severe throughput reduction.In this work, we address these issues by presenting a reliable multicast MAC protocol for wireless multihop networks, which is coupled with a lightweight rate adaptation scheme. Simulation results show that our schemes provide high packet delivery ratio and when compared with other state-of-the-art solutions, they also provide reduced control overhead and data delivery delay.     

自适应调度的增强QoS保证机制

针对IEEE802.11的媒体接入控制层QoS支持技术进行了研究.基于无线局域网MAC层DCF和EDCF两种退避机制,提出了一种增强型自适应慢速递减的EASDCF方案,并在此基础上的结合IEEE802.11e的业务分级的思想,通过最大竞争窗口和重传次数的不同来区分不同的优先级,并对每个优先级进行区分服务.仿真结果表明,EASDCF机制所采用的分级策略提高了时延敏感业务的吞吐量,并使丢包率敏感的数据业务得到可靠保障,该算法能够有效地增强网络的QoS,提高整个网络的性能.     

无线自组网络中TCP流公平性的分析与改进

研究了TCP(transmission control protocol)流在多跳无线自组网络中的公平性问题,发现IEEE802.11DCF协议在此环境下会导致严重的不公平性,即部分节点垄断了网络带宽而其他节点被饿死.首先,通过仿真分析了产生TCP流不公平性的原因,指出其根源在于MAC(media access and control)协议的不公平性,同时,TCP的超时机制加剧了不公平性的产生;然后,利用概率模型定量分析了TCP不公平性与MAC协议参数之间的关系,发现TCP流的公平性与TCP报文长度直接相关,并且增加MAC协议初始竞争窗口的大小能够有效提高公平性.据此,提出了一种根据TCP报文长度动态调节初始回退窗口大小的自适应回退MAC协议改进算法.理论分析和仿真表明,该算法在很大程度上可以有效缓解不公平性问题的产生,并且不会引起网络吞吐量的严重降低.     

p-RWBO:a novel low-collision and QoS-supported MAC for wireless ad hoc networks

QoS supported MAC mechanism is a key issue for supporting QoS in wireless ad hoc networks. A new backoff algorithm,named RWBO BEB,was proposed previously to decrease the packet collision probability significantly. In this paper,it is explored how to make RWBO BEB support service differentiation in wireless ad hoc networks,and a novel proportional service differentiation algorithm,named p-RWBO,is proposed to allocate the wireless bandwidth according to the bandwidth ratio of each station. In p-RWBO,station n's walking probability(pw,n) is selected according to its allocated bandwidth ratio. An analytical model is proposed to analyze how to choose pw,n according to the bandwidth ratios of station n. The simulation results indicate that p-RWBO can differentiate services in terms of both bandwidth and delay.