Study on bandwidth control for multiple transmission rates in IEEE 802.11e EDCAF

IEEE 802.11e supports the guaranteed quality of service (QoS) by providing different transmission priorities. IEEE 802.11e improves the media access control layer of IEEE 802.11 to satisfy the different QoS requirements by introducing two channel access functions: the enhanced distributed channel access (EDCA) and the hybrid coordination function (HCF) controlled channel access (HCCA). Signal quality may affect the available bandwidth and transmission rate, because the characteristic of communication channel in wireless environment is in random time‐variation manner. Generally a station using a lower transmission rate will occupy communication channel for a longer time and degrade system performance, which causes unfairness and cannot provide the guaranteed QoS for the stations with higher transmission rates. We propose a bandwidth control scheme (BCS) by combining the IEEE 802.11e enhanced distributed channel access function (EDCAF) protocol to overcome the guaranteed bandwidth issue in multirate environments. A multirate discrete Markov chain model is analyzed for the multirate transmission system in this paper. According to the obtained results, BCS improves performance especially in throughput and makes the different QoS requirements be processed efficiently and flexibly. Copyright © 2009 John Wiley & Sons, Ltd.     

A fuzzy logic cooperative MAC for MANET

In both wireless local area networks（WLAN） and mobile ad hoc networks（MANET）, the 1EEE 802.11e medium access control （MAC） protocol is proposed for an effective quality of service （QoS） solution. A number of studies have been done to enhance the performance of 802.11e in MANET by independently adjusting contention window （CW） size of each access category （AC） in every node. However, without the cooperation between the high priority flows and lower priority flows, the QoS goal of high priority flows cannot achieve effectively. In this article, a fuzzy logic based cooperative MAC protocol （FLCMAC） is proposed to cooperate amongst network flows and dynamically adjust access probability of each low priority flow affecting the high priority flows to satisfy their QoS requirement. The simulation results indicate that compared to the enhanced distributed channel access （EDCA） scheme of 802.11e, the FLCMAC consistently excels, in terms of throughput and delay under moderate and heavy background traffic both in single-hop and multi-hop scenarios.     

车用自组网媒体访问控制机制改进

为提升车用自组网传输音频、视频的服务质量,对基于IEEE802.11p的车用无线接入技术MAC机制进行改进,提出竞争窗口自适应EDCA机制。仿真实验表明,竞争窗口自适应EDCA机制有效地降低了车用自组网中音频、视频流的传输时延、时延抖动和丢包率,保证了车用自组网传输VoIP、视频会议、音视频流媒体等多媒体业务的服务质量。     

Performance Analysis on Coexistence of EDCA and Legacy DCF Stations in IEEE 802.11 Wireless LANs

The distributed coordination function (DCF) scheme of IEEE 802.11 MAC protocol does not support any concepts of quality of service (QoS) but the enhanced distributed channel access (EDCA) scheme in IEEE 802.11e standard provides QoS according to access categories using different access parameters. However, the legacy DCF stations may be used together with EDCA stations. In this letter, we investigate and analyze the performance discrimination when EDCA and DCF stations operate simultaneously     

Saturation Throughput Analysis of the IEEE 802.11e EDCA Network with Contention Free Burst Under Fading Channel

The 802.11 WLAN legacy standard cannot provide Quality of Service (QoS) support for multimedia applications because the 802.11 was initially developed for Best Effort services. Hence, the 802.11e amendment was published in order to provide the QoS support to WLANs. One of the most important functions in 802.11e is the contention based channel access mechanism called Enhanced Distributed Channel Access (EDCA), which provides a priority scheme by differentiating the Arbitration Inter Frame Space (AIFS), initial window size and Transmission OPportunity limit (TXOPlimit). In this paper, we propose a novel analytical model for the performance analysis of the IEEE 802.11e EDCA network with Contention Free Burst under fading channel and saturated traffic conditions. This new model captures all of the major QoS specific features, namely AIFS, minimum contention window size, maximum contention window size, virtual collision and TXOPlimit. So, we have analyzed the saturation system throughput of the basic access method of the IEEE 802.11e EDCA network.     

Incomplete cooperation‐based service differentiation in WLANs

In the IEEE 802.11 wireless LAN (WLAN), the fundamental medium access control (MAC) mechanism—distributed coordination function (DCF), only supports best‐effort service, and is unaware of the quality‐of‐service (QoS). IEEE 802.11e enhanced distributed channel access (EDCA) supports service differentiation by differentiating contention parameters. This may introduce the problem of non‐cooperative service differentiation. Hence, an incompletely cooperative EDCA (IC‐EDCA) is proposed in this paper to solve the problem. In IC‐EDCA, each node that is cooperative a priori adjusts its contention parameters (e.g., the contention window (CW)) adaptively to the estimated system state (e.g., the number of competing nodes of each service priority). To implement IC‐EDCA in current WLAN nodes, a frame‐analytic estimation algorithm is presented. Moreover, an analytical model is proposed to analyze the performance of IC‐EDCA under saturation cases. Extensive simulations are also carried out to compare the performances of DCF, EDCA, incompletely cooperative game, and IC‐EDCA, and to evaluate the accuracy of the proposed performance model. The simulation results show that IC‐EDCA performs better than DCF, EDCA, and incompletely cooperative game in terms of system throughput or QoS, and that the proposed analytical model is valid. Copyright © 2010 John Wiley & Sons, Ltd.     

Provisioning QoS controlled media access in vehicular to infrastructure communications

The emerging IEEE 802.11p standard adopts the enhanced distributed channel access (EDCA) mechanism as its Media Access Control (MAC) scheme to support quality-of-service (QoS) in the rapidly changing vehicular environment. While the IEEE 802.11 protocol family represents the dominant solutions for wireless local area networks, its QoS performance in terms of throughput and delay, in the highly mobile vehicular networks, is still unclear. To explore an in-depth understanding on this issue, in this paper, we develop a comprehensive analytical model that takes into account both the QoS features of EDCA and the vehicle mobility (velocity and moving directions). Based on the model, we analyze the throughput performance and mean transmission delay of differentiated service traffic, and seek solutions to optimally adjust the parameters of EDCA towards the controllable QoS provision to vehicles. Analytical and simulation results are given to demonstrate the accuracy of the proposed model for varying EDCA parameters and vehicle velocity and density.     

EDCA机制下实时业务多跳传输仿真分析

在AdHoc无线自组织多跳网络中,IEEE802.11e协议采用了增强型分布信道接入机制,用于为实时多媒体业务提供有效的QoS保证机制。简单介绍和对比了802.11分布式协调功能和802.11e增强型分布信道接入机制两种信道接入机制,并通过使用网络仿真软件OPNET,模拟了实时的视、音频业务在802.11分布信道接入机制和802.11e增强型分布信道接入机制信道接入机制下在不同网络负载下的性能并进行了仿真分析。     

Model-based admission control for IEEE 802.11e enhanced distributed channel access

IEEE 802.11e enhanced distributed channel access (EDCA) is a distributed medium access scheme based on carrier sense multiple access with collision avoidance (CSMA/CA) protocol. In this paper, a model-based admission control (MBAC) scheme that performs real-timely at medium access control (MAC) layer is proposed for the decision of accepting or rejecting requests for adding traffic streams to an IEEE 802.11e EDCA wireless local area network (WLAN). The admission control strategy is implemented in access point (AP), which employs collision probability and access delay measures from active flows to estimate throughput and packet delay of each traffic class by the proposed unsaturation analytical model. Simulation results prove accuracy of the proposed analytical model and effectiveness of MBAC scheme.     

无线视频传输的跨层动态映射算法

在IEEE 802.11e EDCA机制和基于场景的马尔可夫链模型基础上,提出跨层动态映射算法来改善无线视频传输的服务质量（QoS）。根据视频帧的重要性和网络的负荷情况,将来自应用层的视频帧信息动态地映射到MAC层中合适的队列中去,并且采用网络仿真工具NS2进行仿真,来比较IEEE 802.11e EDCA机制以及跨层动态映射算法。仿真结果表明跨层动态映射算法能明显提高传输后的视频质量。     

Admission control in IEEE 802.11e wireless LANs

Although IEEE 802.11 based wireless local area networks have become more and more popular due to low cost and easy deployment, they can only provide best effort services and do not have quality of service supports for multimedia applications. Recently, a new standard, IEEE 802.11e, has been proposed, which introduces a so-called hybrid coordination function containing two medium access mechanisms: contention-based channel access and controlled channel access. In this article we first give a brief tutorial on the various MAC-layer QoS mechanisms provided by 802.11e. We show that the 802.11e standard provides a very powerful platform for QoS supports in WLANs. Then we provide an extensive survey of recent advances in admission control algorithms/protocols in IEEE 802.11e WLANs. Our survey covers the research work in admission control for both EDCA and HCCA. We show that the new MAC-layer QoS schemes and parameters provided in EDCA and HCCA can be well utilized to fulfill the requirements of admission control so that QoS for multimedia applications can be provided in WLANs. Last, we give a summary of the design of admission control in EDCA and HCCA, and point out the remaining challenges.     

Throughput and QoS optimization for EDCA-based IEEE 802.11 WLANs

The enhanced distributed channel access (EDCA) mechanism has been adopted by both the IEEE 802.11e standard and the Multiband OFDM Alliance (MBOA) for quality of service (QoS) provisioning in high speed wireless LANs and UWB-based wireless PANs. Based on an analytical model of EDCA, this paper presents an optimal solution to providing maximum system throughput while maintaining the service differentiation among traffic classes. Contention window sizes are adapted to achieve throughput optimization according to the throughput ratio and number of active stations of each traffic class. To overcome the difficulty of accurate estimation of the number of competing stations we propose to use the method of subrange partitioning. An admission control scheme is also discussed. Simulation results demonstrate the effectiveness of the proposed MAC optimization framework.     

基于Ad hoc网络的新EDCA参数调整方案

IEEE802.11e标准中业务优先级不同的AC（access category）是通过设置不同的竞争窗口最大、最小值CWmax,CWmin和仲裁帧间隔值来体现的,如高优先级AC设置小的CWmin,CWmax和AIFS值.研究表明,EDCA对每个AC指定的默认参数值只适用于中等负载、节点数目少的网络场景,并不适用于负载较重、节点数目较多且链路动态变化的Ad hoc网络环境.提出了一种根据网络状况动态调整IEEE 802.11e EDCA的QoS参数的新方案I-ED-CA,该方案根据网络状态调整竞争窗口CW,并通过修改退避计数器值调整AIFS参数,使I-EDCA适合动态变化的Ad hoc网络环境,采用NS2仿真软件对EDCA改进协议I-EDCA进行仿真.仿真结果表明,随着网络中负载的增加,I-EDCA的吞吐量表现平稳,而EDCA吞吐量是下降的.另外,在业务公平性方面,对优先级不同的业务I-EDCA比EDCA的表现更公平.     

Effects of base doping and carrier lifetime on differential current gain and temperature coefficient of 4H-SiC power bipolar junction transistors

Considering the circumstance of heterogeneous voice flows, first, by applying Markov chain, this paper proposes an unsaturated analytical model for the IEEE 802.11e EDCA protocol, which considers the condition of non-ideal transmission channel and the character of the occurrence of backoff countdown at the beginning of time slot in EDCA protocol. Furthermore, according to the proposed model, the media access delay and throughput of a flow are analysed, and the flow-oriented call admission control (CAC) scheme is proposed. Finally, the simulation results are shown to confirm that the proposed CAC scheme can guarantee the requirements of throughput and delay of voice flows, and can admit more voice flows to improve the utilisation efficiency of network resources by choosing the appropriate values of the minimum contention window or the appropriate varieties of voice flows.     

On the capabilities of IEEE 802.11e for multimedia communications over heterogeneous 802.11/802.11e WLANs

Multimedia communications over WLAN is widely acknowledged as one of the key, emerging applications for wireless LANs. As with any multi-service network, there is the need to provision the WLANs with the QoS mechanisms capable of guaranteeing the requirements of various services. The upcoming IEEE 802.11e (EDCA) standard is a proposal defining the mechanisms for wireless LANs aiming to provide QoS support to time-sensitive applications such as voice and video communications. Due to the fact that the IEEE 802.11e interface cards will take over the WLAN market, replacing the use of legacy IEEE 802.11 interface cards in most WLAN applications, an important number of networking scenarios will consist of a hybrid configuration comprising legacy IEEE 802.11-based stations and IEEE 802.11e-based stations. For this reason, in this paper we carry out a performance analysis on the effectiveness of the IEEE 802.11e (EDCA) upcoming standard when supporting different services, such as, voice, video, best-effort, background and in the presence of traffic generated by legacy 802.11 (DCF) based stations.     

Two-level protection and guarantee for multimedia traffic in IEEE 802.11e distributed WLANs

In order to support multimedia applications such as voice and video over the wireless medium, a contention-based channel access function, called Enhanced Distributed Channel Access (EDCA), has been developed in the emerging standard IEEE 802.11e. In the EDCA, differentiated channel access is provided for different traffic classes. In this paper, we propose a two-level protection and guarantee mechanism for voice and video traffic in the EDCA-based distributed wireless LANs. In the first-level protection, the existing voice and video flows are protected from the new and other existing voice and video flows via a distributed admission control with tried-and-known and early-protection enhancements. In the second-level protection, the voice and video flows are protected from the best-effort data traffic by adopting frame-based and limit-based data control mechanisms. Performance evaluations are conducted in terms of throughput, delay, transmission limit, number of collisions, and throughput square relative difference. Extensive simulation results demonstrate that the proposed two-level protection and guarantee mechanism is very effective in terms of the protection and guarantee of existing voice and video flows as well as the utilization of the channel capacity. An early version of this paper was presented at IEEE INFOCOM 2004.     

Efficient Back-off Mechanism for Multimedia Support in 802.11e EDCA Wireless Ad-Hoc Networks

This paper presents an effective back-off mechanism to improve quality of service (QoS) for multimedia applications over the IEEE 802.11e enhanced distribution channel access (EDCA) standard. It can be done with proposed algorithm called dynamic fast adaptation for contention-based EDCA (DFA-EDCA) mechanism. The main concept of proposed DFA-EDCA mechanism is to use the exponential functions to adaptively tune the back-off parameters in IEEE 802.11e EDCA according to the changes on a network load within a short period. In this proposed mechanism an intra-access category (intra-AC) differentiation mechanism is provided to increase its back-off time randomly and achieve discrimination of same priority traffic on different stations. The performance evaluations have been conducted by using Network Simulator (NS-2). The simulation results show that the proposed DFA-EDCA mechanism has greatly outperformed the previous mechanisms such as non-linear dynamic adaptation scheme of the minimum contention window (CW_min-HA), dynamic adaptation algorithm of the maximum contention window (CW_max-adaptation), adaptive enhanced distributed coordination function and the conventional EDCA in terms of goodput, gain of goodput, packet delay, collision rate and channel utilization ratio (CUR). It has significantly reduced both packet delay and collision rate simultaneously together with an obviously increment in both goodput and CUR, which lead to the improvement in QoS for multimedia applications.     

Combining contention‐based access and dynamic service period allocation for performance improvement in IEEE 802.11ad mmWave WLAN

In IEEE 802.11ad millimeter wave wireless LANs, the directional multi‐giga bit stations (DMGSTAs) use contention‐based access periods (CBAPs) and scheduled service periods (SPs) for medium access. The STAs carrying non‐QoS traffic use CBAPs, while SPs are allocated for STAs carrying high QoS applications. During CBAP, the STAs use enhanced distributed channel access (EDCA) scheme. Further, 802.11ad advocates dynamic allocation of SP for guaranteed data transmission based on a centralized polling scheme. The standard advocates that the coverage area around the access point can be divided into several sectors, and the total CBAP shall be divided among the sectors on a time sharing basis. The STAs residing within a sector simultaneously contend during the CBAP fraction of that sector. However, such STAs have to defer their transmission attempts and wait for the designated CBAP fraction of the succeeding beacon interval (BI), if the residual time in the current CBAP fraction is not sufficient for a frame transmission. This leads to very high delay and reduced throughput. The objective of this paper is to propose an efficient hybrid medium access control scheme, where the deferred STAs during CBAP are scheduled again by utilizing the unallocated slots in the SP of the same BI. We describe an analytical model for the throughput and the average frame delay, under the proposed scheme, and compare the performance against the legacy scheme, where the STAs use CBAP alone for channel access. The analytical and simulation results establish that the proposed scheme significantly improves the throughput and reduces the average frame delay.     

Toward an improvement of H.264 video transmission over IEEE 802.11e through a cross-layer architecture

The recently developed H.264 video standard achieves efficient encoding over a bandwidth ranging from a few kilobits per second to several megabits per second. Hence, transporting H.264 video is expected to be an important component of many wireless multimedia services, such as video conferencing, real-time network gaming, and TV broadcasting. However, due to wireless channel characteristics and lack of QoS support, the basic 802.11-based channel access procedure is merely sufficient to deliver non-real-time traffic. The delivery should be augmented by appropriate mechanisms to better consider different QoS requirements and ultimately adjust the medium access parameters to the video data content characteristics. In this article we address H.264 wireless video transmission over IEEE 802.11 WLAN by proposing a robust cross-layer architecture that leverages the inherent H.264 error resilience tools (i.e., data partitioning); and the existing QoS-based IEEE 802.11e MAC protocol possibilities. The performances of the proposed architecture are extensively investigated by simulations. Results obtained indicate that compared to 802.11 and 802.11e, our cross-layer architecture allows graceful video degradation while minimizing the mean packet loss and end-to-end delays.     

A traffic control system for IEEE 802.11 networks based on available bandwidth estimation

To support Quality of service (QoS)‐sensitive applications like real‐time video streaming in IEEE 802.11 networks, a MAC layer extension for QoS, IEEE 802.11e, has been recently ratified as a standard. This MAC layer solution, however, addresses only the issue of prioritized access to the wireless medium and leaves such issues as QoS guarantee and admission control to the traffic control systems at the higher layers. This paper presents an IP‐layer traffic control system for IEEE 802.11 networks based on available bandwidth estimation. We build an analytical model for estimating the available bandwidth by extending an existing throughput computation model, and implement a traffic control system that provides QoS guarantees and admission control by utilizing the estimated available bandwidth information. We have conducted extensive performance evaluation of the proposed scheme via both simulations and measurements in the real test‐bed. The experiment results show that our estimation model and traffic control system work accurately and effectively in various network load conditions without IEEE 802.11e. The presence of IEEE 802.11e will allow even more efficient QoS provision, as the proposed scheme and the MAC layer QoS support will complement each other. Copyright © 2006 John Wiley & Sons, Ltd.