Statistical multiplexing, admission region, and contention window optimization in multiclass wireless LANs

This paper presents an analytical model for evaluating the statistical multiplexing effect, admission region, and contention window design in multiclass wireless local area networks (WLANs). We consider distributed medium access control (MAC) which provisions service differentiation by assigning different contention windows to different classes. Mobile nodes belonging to different classes may have heterogeneous traffic arrival processes with different quality of service (QoS) requirements. With bursty input traffic, e.g. on/off sources, our analysis shows that the WLAN admission region under the QoS constraint can be significantly improved, when the statistical multiplexing effect is taken into account. We also analyze the MAC resource sharing between the short-range dependent (SRD) on/off sources and the long-range dependent (LRD) fractional Brownian motion (FBM) traffic, where the impact of the Hurst parameter on the admission region is investigated. Moveover, we demonstrate that the proper selection of contention windows plays an important role in improving the WLAN’s QoS capability, while the optimal contention window for each class and the maximum admission region can be jointly solved in our analytical model. The analysis accuracy and the resource utilization improvement from statistical multiplexing gain and contention window optimization are demonstrated by extensive numerical results. Yu Cheng received the B.E. and M.E. degrees in Electrical Engineering from Tsinghua University, Beijing, China, in 1995 and 1998, respectively, and the Ph.D. degree in Electrical and Computer Engineering from the University of Waterloo, Waterloo, Ontario, Canada, in 2003. From September 2004 to July 2006, he was a postdoctoral research fellow in the Department of Electrical and Computer Engineering, University of Toronto, Ontario, Canada. Since August 2006, he has been with the Department of Electrical and Computer Engineering, Illinois Institute of Technology, Chicago, Illinois, USA, as an Assistant Professor. His research interests include service and application oriented networking, autonomic network management, Internet performance analysis, resource allocation, wireless networks, and wireless/wireline interworking. He received a Postdoctoral Fellowship Award from the Natural Sciences and Engineering Research Council of Canada (NSERC) in 2004. Xinhua Ling received the B. Eng. degree in Radio Engineering from Southeast University, Nanjing, China in 1993 and the M. Eng. degree in Electrical Engineering from the National University of Singapore, Singapore in 2001. He is currently pursuing the Ph.D. degree in the Department of Electrical and Computer Engineering at the University of Waterloo, Ontario, Canada. From 1993 to 1998, he was an R&D Engineer in Beijing Institute of Radio Measurement, China. From February 2001 to September 2002, he was with the Centre for Wireless Communications (currently Institute for Infocom Research), Singapore, as a Senior R&D Engineer, developing the protocol stack for UE in the UMTS system. His general research interests are in the areas of cellular, WLAN, WPAN, mesh and ad hoc networks and their internetworking, focusing on protocol design and performance analysis. Lin X. Cai received the B.Sc. degree in computer science from Nanjing University of Science and Technology, Nanjing, China, in 1996 and the MASc. degree in electrical and computer engineering from the University of Waterloo, Waterloo, Canada, in 2005. She is currently working toward the Ph.D. degree in the same field at the University of Waterloo. Her current research interests include network performance analysis and protocol design for multimedia applications over wireless networks. Wei Song received the B.S. degree in electrical engineering from Hebei University, China, in 1998 and the M.S. degree in computer science from Beijing University of Posts and Telecommunications, China, in 2001. She is currently working toward the Ph.D. degree at the Department of Electrical and Computer Engineering, University of Waterloo, Canada. Her current research interests include resource allocation and quality-of-service (QoS) provisioning for the integrated cellular networks and wireless local area networks (WLANs). Weihua Zhuang received the Ph.D. degree in electrical engineering from the University of New Brunswick, Canada. Since October 1993, she has been with the Department of Electrical and Computer Engineering, University of Waterloo, Canada, where she is a Professor. Dr. Zhuang is a co-author of the textbook Wireless Communications and Networking (Prentice Hall, 2003). Her current research interests include multimedia wireless communications, wireless networks, and radio positioning. She received the Outstanding Performance Award in 2005 and 2006 from the University of Waterloo and the Premier’s Research Excellence Award in 2001 from the Ontario Government for demonstrated excellence of scientific and academic contributions. She is the Editor-in-Chief of IEEE Transactions on Vehicular Technology and an Editor of IEEE Transactions on Wireless Communications. Xuemin (Sherman) Shen received the B.Sc.(1982) degree from Dalian Maritime University (China) and the M.Sc. (1987) and Ph.D. degrees (1990) from Rutgers University, New Jersey (USA), all in electrical engineering. He is a Professor and the Associate Chair for Graduate Studies, Department of Electrical and Computer Engineering, University of Waterloo, Canada. His research focuses on mobility and resource management in interconnected wireless/wired networks, UWB wireless communications systems, wireless security, and ad hoc and sensor networks. He is a co-author of three books, and has published more than 300 papers and book chapters in wireless communications and networks, control and filtering. Dr. Shen serves as the Technical Program Committee Chair for IEEE Globecom’07, General Co-Chair for Chinacom’07 and QShine’06, the Founding Chair for IEEE Communications Society Technical Committee on P2P Communications and Networking. He also serves as a Founding Area Editor for IEEE Transactions on Wireless Communications; Associate Editor for IEEE Transactions on Vehicular Technology; KICS/IEEE Journal of Communications and Networks; Computer Networks (Elsevier); ACM/Wireless Networks; and Wireless Communications and Mobile Computing (John Wiley), etc. He has also served as Guest Editor for IEEE JSAC, IEEE Wireless Communications, and IEEE Communications Magazine. Dr. Shen received the Excellent Graduate Supervision Award in 2006, and the Outstanding Performance Award in 2004 from the University of Waterloo, the Premier’s Research Excellence Award in 2003 from the Province of Ontario, Canada, and the Distinguished Performance Award in 2002 from the Faculty of Engineering, University of Waterloo. Dr. Shen is a registered Professional Engineer of Ontario, Canada. Alberto Leon-Garcia received the B.S., M.S., and Ph.D. degrees in electrical engineering from the University of Southern California, in 1973, 1974, and 1976 respectively. He is a Full Professor in the Department of Electrical and Computer Engineering, University of Toronto, ON, Canada, and he currently holds the Nortel Institute Chair in Network Architecture and Services. In 1999 he became an IEEE fellow for “For contributions to multiplexing and switching of integrated services traffic”. Dr. Leon-Garcia was Editor for Voice/Data Networks for the IEEE Transactions on Communications from 1983 to 1988 and Editor for the IEEE Information Theory Newsletter from 1982 to 1984. He was Guest Editor of the September 1986 Special Issue on Performance Evaluation of Communications Networks of the IEEE Selected Areas on Communications. He is also author of the textbooks Probability and Random Processes for Electrical Engineering (Reading, MA: Addison-Wesley), and Communication Networks: Fundamental Concepts and Key Architectures (McGraw-Hill), co-authored with Dr. Indra Widjaja.