Performance analysis of IEEE 802.11 DCF and 802.11e EDCA based on queueing networks

The authors propose a new analytical model based on BCMP closed queueing networks in order to evaluate the performance of IEEE 802.11 DCF MAC protocol when all nodes are in the transmission range of each other, that is, a single hop wireless ad hoc network. By the proposed model, some performance metrics such as saturation and non-saturation throughput, distributions of channel access delay and the number of packets in the MAC buffer are derived. An extension of the proposed model is used for the analysis of IEEE 802.11e EDCA and the same performance metrics are evaluated for this protocol. Analytical results on IEEE 802.11e prove that differentiation in service is possible and channel share for each service type may be well assigned by tuning the MAC protocol parameters. Simulation results show consistency with our analytical results.     

Enhancing enhanced distributed channel access function based on cross-layer information for multirate wireless networks

IEEE 802.lie provides guaranteed quality of service (QoS) by proving different transmission priorities. IEEE 802. lie improves the media access control layer of IEEE 802.11 to satisfy the different QoS requirements by introducing two new channel access functions: the enhanced distributed channel access (EDCA) and the hybrid coordination function-controlled channel access. The available bandwidth and transmission rate may be easily affected by the signal quality, because the communication channel in a wireless environment operates in a random time-variation manner. Generally, a station using a low transmission rate will occupy the communication channel for a long time and degrade system performance, which causes bandwidth waste and unfairness; thus the guaranteed QoS for stations with higher transmission rates cannot be provided. An enhancing EDCAF (E DCAF) is proposed that consolidates the cross-layer concept and the IEEE 802.1 le EDCAF protocol. After simulation experiments, E DCAF obviously improves performance, especially in throughput and fairness. E DCAF scheduling also allows the different QoS requirements to be processed efficiently and flexibly.     

Effective transmission opportunity allocation scheme for real-time variable bit rate traffic flows with different delay bounds

The medium access control of IEEE 802.11e defines a novel coordination function, namely, hybrid coordination function (HCF), which allocates transmission opportunity (TXOP) to stations taking their quality of service (QoS) requirements into account. However, the reference TXOP allocation scheme of HCF controlled channel access, a contention-free channel access function of HCF, is only suitable for constant bit rate traffic. For variable bit rate traffic, packet loss may occur seriously. The authors propose a TXOP allocation scheme to efficiently allocate bandwidth and meet the QoS requirements in terms of both delay bound and packet loss probability. To achieve high bandwidth efficiency, the authors take advantage of not only intra-flow multiplexing gain of traffic flows with large delay bounds, but also inter-flow multiplexing gain of multiple traffic flows with different delay bounds. According to numerical results obtained by computer simulations, the proposed TXOP allocation scheme results in much higher bandwidth efficiency than previous algorithms under the same constraints of delay bounds and packet loss probability.     

Achieving higher throughput in ieee 802.11 wireless local area networks with burst transmission methods

As extensions in the emerging 802.11e for quality-of-service provisioning, burst transmission and the acknowledgment aggregation are the two important operations to improve the channel efficiency of IEEE 802.11-based wireless local area networks (WLANs). However, only a few works have been done on these operations, and usually assumed the networks to be operated under saturated traffic conditions and error-free channels. In practice, the assumptions may not be valid because real-time traffic with proper rate control will not saturate the networks and the channel is generally error-prone. Thus, the authors consider two new methods resulted from these operations and analyse their performance under unsaturated and error-prone WLANs, with a Markov chain model. The results show that the new methods generally have better throughput than the conventional IEEE 802.11 medium access control (MAC) in the WLANs.     

Adaptive bandwidth sharing mechanism for quality of service administration in infrastructure wireless networks

In infrastructure wireless networks, the wireless hop can be considered as another hop of the transmission path. With the rapid growth of wireless traffics, the future wireless network is expected to provide services for heterogeneous data traffics with different quality of service (QoS) requirements. Most proposed schemes do not have adaptive mechanisms to deal with the environment changes. In real situation, bandwidths, error rates and loss rates of wireless links vary frequently. We will base on the differentiated service model and propose a wireless differentiation (WD) scheme for user datagram protocol (UDP) flows and a wireless differentiation with prioritised ACK scheme for connections with transmission control protocol (TCP) flows. Both schemes provide QoS support for IEEE 802.11b and do not change the basic access mechanism of IEEE 802.11b.     

Energy efficiency modelling for IEEE 802.11a distribution coordination function system without finite retry limits

Use of IEEE 802.11 wireless local area networks (WLANs) as an extension to existing wired networks, offering both mobility and portability in a residential or office environment, is growing at an unprecedented rate. One of the critical limitations of current WLANs is the limited energy storage of mobile devices, and the design of energy-efficient protocols for WLANs has therefore become an area of intensive research. An analytical framework to study the energy consumption and energy efficiency of IEEE 802.11a WLANs is proposed. The energy consumption by considering the interactions between IEEE 802.11a PHY and MAC layers is modelled. Simulation results demonstrate that the theoretical model is accurate in predicting the energy efficiency over a wide range of scenarios. In addition, the effects of different PHY and MAC layer parameters on energy efficiency of IEEE 802.11a WLANs are investigated, as are the effects of different parameters on energy efficiency.     

Traffic scheduling for multimedia transmission over IEEE 802.11e wireless LAN

As the demand for broadband multimedia wireless is increasing, improving the quality of service (QoS) of the widely deployed IEEE 802.11 wireless LAN has become crucial. In order to attain the QoS required by a wide range of applications, the IEEE 802.11 working group has denned a new standard - the IEEE 802.lie. However, very limited work has been performed to address the QoS transmission problem of real-time video over IEEE 802.11e. A novel measurement-based dynamic transmission opportunity (MBDTXOP) scheme is proposed, which adaptively allocates resources to a variable bit rate (VBR) video on the basis of the estimation of future traffic demand to support efficient QoS transmission of VBR video. The novelty of the proposed scheme, when compared with existing methods, lies in estimating the required network resources by exploiting the characteristics of digital video; this capability enables the MBDTXOP scheme to substantially increase network utilisation while preserving the required QoS for the transmission of VBR video. Simulations comparing the proposed scheme with other mechanisms clearly demonstrate the outstanding performance of the former.     

Fair scheduling with rate control for IEEE 802.16 broadband wireless networks

Although the scheduling problem of the uplink transmission in the IEEE 802.16 broadband wireless access network is extensively discussed, most of the results are limited to the quality of service (QoS) upon throughput and delay requirement. But as in practice only limited wireless resources are made available, a fairness-based scheduling upon each connection?s QoS provides better outcomes. In this study, the authors propose a new fair uplink scheduling for real-time polling service and non-real-time polling service with the proportional sharing of excess bandwidth of the network. To implement the proposed fair scheduling that satisfies the delay requirement and full bandwidth utilisation, the authors introduce the rate control algorithm. With the proposed scheduling, we guarantee the fairness, delay requirement and full bandwidth utilisation which are not fully achieved in the existing results.     

Improved power-saving medium-access protocol for IEEE 802.11e QoS-enabled wireless networks

The performance of a new pointer-based medium-access control protocol that was designed to significantly improve the energy efficiency of user terminals in quality-of-service-enabled wireless local area networks was analysed. The new protocol, pointer- controlled slot allocation and resynchronisation protocol (PCSARe), is based on the hybrid coordination function-controlled channel access mode of the IEEE 802.11e standard. PCSARe reduces energy consumption by removing the need for power-saving stations to remain awake for channel listening. Discrete event network simulations were performed to compare the performance of PCSARe with the non-automatic power save delivery (APSD) and scheduled-APSD power- saving modes of IEEE 802.11e. The simulation results show a demonstrable improvement in energy efficiency without significant reduction in performance when using PCSARe. For a wireless network consisting of an access point and eight stations in power-saving mode, the energy saving was up to 39% when using PCSARe instead of IEEE 802.11e non-APSD. The results also show that PCSARe offers significantly reduced uplink access delay over IEEE 802.11e non-APSD, while modestly improving the uplink throughput. Furthermore, although both had the same energy consumption, PCSARe gave a 25% reduction in downlink access delay compared with IEEE 802.11e S-APSD.     

A cross-layer adaptive algorithm for multimedia QoS fairness in WLAN environments using neural networks

The authors address the problem of providing fair multimedia quality-of-service (QoS) in IEEE 802.11 distributed co-ordination function-based wireless local area networks in the infrastructure mode where mobile hosts experience heterogeneous channel conditions due to mobility and fading effects. It was observed that unequal link qualities can pose significant unfairness of channel sharing, which may thereby lead to the degradation of multimedia QoS performed in adverse conditions. A cross-layer adaptation scheme that provides fair QoS by online adjusting the multidimensional medium access control layer backoff parameters in accordance with the application-layer QoS requirements as well as the physical-layer channel conditions was proposed. The solution is based on an optimisation approach, which utilises neural networks to learn the cross-layer function. Simulation results demonstrate that the proposed adaptation scheme can tackle heterogeneous channel conditions and random joining (or leaving) of hosts to achieve fair QoS in terms of throughput and packet delay.     

Differentiated cooperative multiple access for multimedia communications over fading wireless networks

The quality of service (QoS) support for multimedia communications faces a big challenge in a fading wireless network. On one hand, conventional automatic repeat request (ARQ) schemes are not effective for small-scale fading channels with correlated errors due to consecutive retransmission failures. On the other hand, large-scale fading due to propagation loss or shadowing severely limits transmission range. A novel differentiated cooperative medium access control (MAC) protocol, called DC-MAC, is proposed to enhance the QoS support for multimedia communications while supporting service differentiation based on the IEEE 802.11e architecture. By enabling cooperative ARQ, the retransmission is initiated from an appropriate transmission queue of an appropriate relay node instead of the original source. Since unnecessary and useless retransmissions may intensify the node contention and degrade the system performance contrarily, a novel negative acknowledgement feedback mechanism is introduced for loss distinguishing and channel estimation such that cooperative retransmission will be employed only when necessary and only by competent nodes. Extensive simulations are conducted on the OPNET platform to analyse the performances of DC-MAC under both small-scale and large-scale fading. Simulation results show that the proposed scheme significantly improves the performances of both multimedia applications and best-effort data applications in terms of throughput, delay and coverage with moderate user contention.     

Software architecture design,implementation, and evaluation of DCF-based MAC protocol on a low-power transceiver

The carrier-sensing multiple access with collision avoidance (CSMA/CA) protocol is the most well-known medium access control (MAC) protocol for wireless networks. Both the distributed coordination function (DCF) defined in IEEE 802.11 and the MAC layer defined in IEEE 802.15.4 are based on the CSMA/CA protocol. Nevertheless, these two standards have quite different carrier-sensing mechanisms. Different to continuous carrier sensing in DCF, an IEEE 802.15.4 node only senses the channel once just after a backoff. Sensing-once mechanism can reduce the computation loading on the CPU. However, it significantly increases the probability of failure transmission because a node is not fully aware of channel activity. This paper first proposes a software architecture integrating proper hardware features for designing a DCF-based MAC protocol and then successfully implements it on a low-power transceiver. In addition, this paper conducts experiments in a star topology network to compare the performance of the above DCF-MAC protocol with the IEEE 802.15.4 MAC protocol. Experimental results show that, without continuous sensing, the IEEE 802.15.4 network suffers a high transmission failure probability as the network size increases. Consequently, the proposed DCF-based MAC protocol outperforms the IEEE 802.15.4 MAC protocol in terms of packet loss probability and throughput.     

Wireless mesh networks channel reservation: modelling and delay analysis

In order to overcome the negotiation procedure bottleneck of the standard DCF in wireless mesh networks, the authors propose a new channel reservation function (CRF) that reduces the negotiation overhead of the DCF, which as a result reduces the overall transmission delay effectively without of any extra bandwidth consumption. Furthermore, the authors provide an analytical model for the proposed scheme for which the simulation results measure the amount that the new method can reduce the average total delay for both regular and fragmented mesh topologies demonstrating superiority of the new method over the classic 802.11 solution. Additionally, the authors extend the scheme to multichannel CRF upon which the proposed method can be used for multichannel applications.     

Survey and Analysis of VoIP Frame Aggregation Methods over A-MSDU IEEE 802.11n Wireless Networks

The IEEE 802.11n standard has provided prominent features that greatly contribute to ubiquitous wireless networks. Over the last ten years, voice over IP (VoIP) has become widespread around the globe owing to its low-cost or even free call rate. The combination of these technologies (VoIP and wireless) has become desirable and inevitable for organizations. However, VoIP faces a bandwidth utilization issue when working with 802.11 wireless networks. The bandwidth utilization is inefficient on the grounds that (i) 80 bytes of 802.11/RTP/UDP/IP header is appended to 10–730 bytes of VoIP payload and (ii) 765 µs waiting intervals follow each 802.11 VoIP frame. Without considering the quality requirements of a VoIP call, be including frame aggregation in the IEEE 802.11n standard has been suggested as a solution for the bandwidth utilization issue. Consequently, several aggregation methods have been proposed to handle the quality requirements of VoIP calls when carried over an IEEE 802.11n wireless network. In this survey, we analyze the existing aggregation methods of VoIP over the A-MSDU IEEE 802.11n wireless standard. The survey provides researchers with a detailed analysis of the bandwidth utilization issue concerning the A-MSDU 802.11n standard, discussion of the main approaches of frame aggregation methods and existing aggregation methods, elaboration of the impact of frame aggregation methods on network performance and VoIP call quality, and suggestion of new areas to be investigated in conjunction with frame aggregation. The survey contributes by offering guidelines to design an appropriate, reliable, and robust aggregation method of VoIP over 802.11n standard.     

Design and theoretical analysis of throughput enhanced spatial reuse distributed coordination function for IEEE 802.11

The IEEE 802.11 distributed coordination function (DCF) employs a carrier sensing mechanism, a simple and effective mechanism to mitigate collisions in wireless networks. But the carrier sensing mechanism is inefficient in terms of shared channel use because an overcautious channel assessment approach is used to estimate interference at a receiver. A DCF node simply blocks its transmission when it senses that the channel is busy. However, in many cases this channel assessing node?s own transmission may not generate enough interference to disrupt the ongoing transmission at the receiver. This overcautious channel assessment unnecessarily blocks transmission attempts, and thus degrades the overall network throughput. To avoid this unnecessary blocking, the authors propose a spatial reuse DCF (SRDCF), which utilises location information and transmission parameters to make accurate channel assessments and to permit concurrent transmissions by adjusting the transmission power. SRDCF also resolves the contention between opportunistic concurrent transmissions with a secondary backoff counter. Consequently, the proposed scheme improves the overall network throughput because of more concurrent transmissions. The authors theoretically analyse the performance enhancement of SRDCF over the original IEEE 802.11 DCF by using a Markov chain model and verify it through simulations.     

Dynamic resource allocation for supporting real-time multimedia applications in IEEE 802.15.3 WPANs

The IEEE 802.15.3 medium access control (MAC) protocol is an emerging standard for high-rate wireless personal area networks (WPANs), especially for supporting high-quality real-time multimedia applications. Despite defining quality of service (QoS) signalling mechanisms for interoperability between devices, IEEE 802.15.3 does not specify resource allocation algorithms that are left to manufacturers. To guarantee the QoS of real-time variable bit rate (VBR) videos and utilise the radio resource efficiently, the authors propose a dynamic resource allocation algorithm. The proposed bandwidth allocation algorithm is based on a novel traffic predictor. Recently, the variable step-size normalised least mean square (VSSNLMS) algorithm was employed for on-line traffic prediction of VBR videos. However, the performance of the VSSNLMS algorithm significantly degrades due to the abrupt traffic variation occurring at the scene boundary. To tackle this problem, the authors design a novel traffic predictor based on a simple scene detection algorithm and the VSSNLMS algorithm. Analyses using real-life MPEG video traces indicate that the proposed traffic predictor significantly outperforms the VSSNLMS algorithm with respect to the prediction error. The performance of the proposed bandwidth allocation algorithm is also investigated by comparing several existing algorithms. Simulation results demonstrate that the proposed bandwidth allocation algorithm surpasses other mechanisms in terms of channel utilisation, buffer usage and packet loss rate.     

Quality of service supporting downlink scheduling scheme in worldwide interoperability for microwave access wireless access systems

IEEE 802.16 is a standardisation for a broadband wireless access in metropolitan area networks (MAN). Since the IEEE 802.16 standard defines the concrete quality of service (QoS) requirement, a scheduling scheme is necessary to achieve the QoS requirement. Many scheduling schemes are proposed with the purpose of throughput optimisation and fairness enhancement, however, few scheduling schemes support the delay requirement. In this study, the authors propose a new scheduling scheme reflecting the delay requirement. Specifically, the authors add the delay requirement term in the proportional fair scheduling scheme and the scheduling parameters are optimised with respect to the QoS requirement. Therefore the QoS requirement is achieved without the excessive resource consumption.     

Performance behaviour of IEEE 802.11 distributed coordination function

The authors present an extensive investigation of the performance of the IEEE 802.11 medium access control (MAC) protocol, with respect to throughput and delay. For the protocol analysis, a new model, which describes the protocol's behaviour to a great extent by incorporating and extending the existing models, is proposed. The authors also present a detailed analysis of the end-to-end delay through the study of the MAC delay and the queueing delay. The authors use the Z-transform of backoff duration to obtain the mean value, the variance and the probability distribution of the MAC delay. For the queueing analysis, first the authors consider an M/G/l queue in order to provide a first look at the queueing delay. Second, the authors modify the input process of the queue so that the packet arrival process is described by an ON- OFF model, which expresses the bursty nature of traffic. In the investigations, data rates of 1, 5.5 and 11 Mbps are assumed to highlight the effect of the bit rate on network performance for both Basic and request-to-send/ clear-to-send access mechanisms. The throughput and delay analyses are validated by simulating the distributed coordination function, whereas the models are compared with the existing models based on their results. The accuracy of the analyses was found to be quite satisfactory.     

A pinwheel packet scheduling scheme for broadband wireless networks

Abstract

A frame‐based packet scheduling scheme, the pinwheel scheduling (PWS) scheme, is proposed and investigated at the medium access control (MAC) layer in broadband wireless networks. The objective of the proposed scheduling scheme is to provide low delay and low jitter for real‐time traffic. We have demonstrated in this paper that the proposed PWS scheme not only satisfies the packet‐level QoS requirements but also has low implementation cost. The PWS scheme gives the highest priority to CBR connections in a service cycle to minimize their delay and jitter. For ABR traffic, a number of slots are allocated to fit their MCR. The remaining time slots are then allocated to VBR traffic according to their PCR. Thus, the VBR traffic may suffer large delay and jitter when the number of CBR connections increases. The PWS with modular strategy (PWS/MS) is proposed to improve the performance of the VBR traffic. We also introduce three different slot‐reuse strategies named real‐time traffic first (RTF), non‐real‐time traffic first (NRTF) and longest queue first (LQF), respectively, to improve resource utilization. In order to demonstrate the performance of the PWS and PWS/MS schemes, comparisons are made with existing schemes such as the round‐robin (RR) and weighted‐round‐robin (WRR) by using OPNET software. Simulation results show that the proposed schemes are capable of maintaining the lowest delay and jitter for VBR and CBR traffic while not sacrificing the available bit rate (ABR) traffic.     

Medium access control access delay analysis of IEEE 802.11e wireless LAN

The IEEE 802.11e standard is specified to support quality-of-service in wireless local area networks, and different contention parameters are designated to each type of service. This developed model is presented to analyse the scheduling and the contention between packets with different priorities, where the new features of the enhanced distributed channel access such as virtual collision, backoff, minimum contention window and different arbitration inter-frame spaces are taken into account. Based on the model, the delay performance of differentiated service traffic is analysed and a recursive method is proposed, which is capable of calculating the mean access delay. Simulations show that the model and the analysis provide an insight into the protocol and the effects of different parameters on the performance.