Dynamic tuning of the IEEE 802.11 protocol to achieve a theoreticalthroughput limit

In wireless LANs (WLANs), the medium access control (MAC) protocol is the main element that determines the efficiency in sharing the limited communication bandwidth of the wireless channel. In this paper we focus on the efficiency of the IEEE 802.11 standard for WLANs. Specifically, we analytically derive the average size of the contention window that maximizes the throughput, hereafter theoretical throughput limit, and we show that: 1) depending on the network configuration, the standard can operate very far from the theoretical throughput limit; and 2) an appropriate tuning of the backoff algorithm can drive the IEEE 802.11 protocol close to the theoretical throughput limit. Hence we propose a distributed algorithm that enables each station to tune its backoff algorithm at run-time. The performances of the IEEE 802.11 protocol, enhanced with our algorithm, are extensively investigated by simulation. Specifically, we investigate the sensitiveness of our algorithm to some network configuration parameters (number of active stations, presence of hidden terminals). Our results indicate that the capacity of the enhanced protocol is very close to the theoretical upper bound in all the configurations analyzed     

Relay-volunteered multi-rate cooperative MAC protocol for IEEE 802.11 WLANs

In IEEE 802.11, the rate of a station (STA) is dynamically determined by link adaptation. Low-rate STAs tend to hog more channel time than high-rate STAs due to fair characteristics of carrier sense multiple access/collision avoidance, leading to overall throughput degradation. It can be improved by limiting the transmission opportunities of low-rate STAs by backoff parameters. This, however, may cause unfair transmission opportunities to low-rate STAs. In an attempt to increase overall throughput by volunteer high-rate relay STAs while maintaining fairness, we propose a new cooperative medium access control (MAC) protocol, relay-volunteered multi-rate cooperative MAC (RM-CMAC) based on ready to send/clear to send in multi-rate IEEE 802.11. In the RM-CMAC protocol, we show that the effect of hogging channel time by low-rate STAs can be remedied by controlling the initial backoff window size of low-rate STAs and the reduced transmission opportunity of low-rate STAs can be compensated by the help of volunteer high-rate relay STAs. We analyze the performance of RM-CMAC, i.e., throughput and MAC delay, by a multi-rate embedded Markov chain model. We demonstrate that our analysis is accurate and the RM-CMAC protocol enhances the network throughput and MAC delay while maintaining the fairness of low-rate STAs.     

EBA: an enhancement of the IEEE 802.11 DCF via distributed reservation

The IEEE 802.11 standard for wireless local area networks (WLANs) employs a medium access control (MAC), called distributed coordination function (DCF), which is based on carrier sense multiple access with collision avoidance (CSMA/CA). The collision avoidance mechanism utilizes the random backoff prior to each frame transmission attempt. The random nature of the backoff reduces the collision probability, but cannot completely eliminate collisions. It is known that the throughput performance of the 802.11 WLAN is significantly compromised as the number of stations increases. In this paper, we propose a novel distributed reservation-based MAC protocol, called early backoff announcement (EBA), which is backward compatible with the legacy DCF. Under EBA, a station announces its future backoff information in terms of the number of backoff slots via the MAC header of its frame being transmitted. All the stations receiving the information avoid collisions by excluding the same backoff duration when selecting their future backoff value. Through extensive simulations, EBA is found to achieve a significant increase in the throughput performance as well as a higher degree of fairness compared to the 802.11 DCF.     

A Game-Theoretic Study of CSMA/CA Under a Backoff Attack

CSMA/CA, the contention mechanism of the IEEE 802.11 DCF medium access protocol, has recently been found vulnerable to selfish backoff attacks consisting in nonstandard configuration of the constituent backoff scheme. Such attacks can greatly increase a selfish station's bandwidth share at the expense of honest stations applying a standard configuration. The paper investigates the distribution of bandwidth among anonymous network stations, some of which are selfish. A station's obtained bandwidth share is regarded as a payoff in a noncooperative CSMA/CA game. Regardless of the IEEE 802.11 parameter setting, the payoff function is found similar to a multiplayer Prisoners' Dilemma; moreover, the number (though not the identities) of selfish stations can be inferred by observation of successful transmission attempts. Further, a repeated CSMA/CA game is defined, where a station can toggle between standard and nonstandard backoff configurations with a view of maximizing a long-term utility. It is argued that a desirable station strategy should yield a fair, Pareto efficient, and subgame perfect Nash equilibrium. One such strategy, called CRISP, is described and evaluated     

Optimal Constant-Window Backoff Scheme for IEEE 802.11 DCF in Single-Hop Wireless Networks Under Finite Load Conditions

Existing backoff scheme’s optimization of IEEE 802.11 DCF MAC protocol consider only saturated networks or asymptotic conditions. In real situations, traffic is bursty or streamed at low rates so that stations do not operate usually in saturated regime. In this work, we propose and analyze a backoff enhancement for IEEE 802.11 DCF that requires information only about the network size and that is quasi-optimal under all traffic loads. We first analyze the performance of DCF multiple access scheme under general load conditions in single-hop configuration and we provide an accurate delay statistics model that consider the self-loop probability in every backoff state. We prove then the short-term unfairness of the binary exponential backoff used in IEEE 802.11 by defining channel capture probability as fairness metric. Motivated by the results on fairness, we introduce the constant-window backoff scheme and we compare its performance to IEEE 802.11 DCF with Binary exponential backoff. The quasi-optimality of the proposed scheme is proved analytically and numerical results show that it increases, both the throughput and fairness, of IEEE 802.11 DCF while remaining insensitive to traffic intensity. The analysis is then extended to consider the finite queuing capacity at nodes buffers using results from the delay analysis. NS2 simulations validate the obtained results. Institut Eurecom’s research is partially supported by its industrial members: BMW Group Research & Technology—BMW Group Company, Bouygues Telecom, Cisco Systems, France Telecom , Hitachi Europe, SFR, Sharp, STMicroelectronics, Swisscom, Thales.     

The IEEE 802.11 Distributed Coordination Function in Small-Scale Ad-Hoc Wireless LANs

The IEEE 802.11 standards for wireless local area networks define how the stations of an ad-hoc wireless network coordinate in order to share the medium efficiently. This work investigates the performance of such a network by considering the two different access mechanisms proposed in these standards. The IEEE 802.11 access mechanisms are based on the carrier sense multiple access with collision avoidance (CSMA/CA) protocol using a binary slotted exponential backoff mechanism. The basic CSMA/CA mechanism uses an acknowledgment message at the end of each transmitted packet, whereas the request to send/clear to send (RTS/CTS) CSMA/CA mechanism also uses a RTS/CTS message exchange before transmitting a packet. In this work, we analyze these two access mechanisms in terms of throughput and delay. Extensive numerical results are presented to highlight the characteristics of each access mechanism and to define the dependence of each mechanism on the backoff procedure parameters.     

IEEE802.11无线局域网中一种支持业务区分的回退算法

支持QoS的MAC机制是WLAN支持QoS的关键所在.我们已经给出了一种低分组碰撞概率的MAC层回退机制——RWBO+BEB.该文进一步讨论如何让RWBO+BEB支持业务区分的问题.首先提出了一个Markov链模型,分析如何根据无线终端的带宽比率设置最小竞争窗口,然后给出了一种新的支持业务区分的回退算法——DS-RWBO,仿真结果表明,DS-RWBO能根据局域网中每个终端的带宽比率分配无线信道的带宽资源.     

Sequential Coordination Function for Throughput and Fairness Enhancement of Wireless LANs

High throughput and fair resource sharing are two of the most important objectives in designing a medium access control (MAC) protocol. Currently, most MAC protocols including IEEE 802.11 DCF adopt a random access based approach in a distributed manner in order to coordinate the wireless channel accesses among competing stations. In this paper, we first identify that a random access?Cbased MAC protocol may suffer from MAC protocol overhead such as a random backoff for data transmission and a collision among simultaneously transmitting stations. Then, we propose a new MAC protocol, called sequential coordination function (SCF), which coordinates every station to send a data frame sequentially one after another in a distributed manner. By defining a service period and a joining period, the SCF eliminates unnecessary contentions during the service period, and by explicitly determining the sequence of frame transmission for each stations, it reduces collision occurrences and ensures fairness among stations in the service period. The performance of SCF is investigated through intensive simulations, which show that the SCF achieves higher throughput and fairness performances than other existing MAC protocols in a wide range of the traffic load and the number of stations.     

IEEE 802.11网络中增强的退避算法

IEEE 802.11协议的MAC层通过二进制指数退避算法实现对媒体的争用,该文提出一种增强的退避算法,对网络中的动态站点数进行估计,自适应改变退避算法的竞争窗口,以提高网络的性能。     

Robust SuperPoll with Chaining Protocol for IEEE 802.11 Wireless LANs in Support of Multimedia Applications

Design of Wireless Local Area Networks (WLANs) needs to take into consideration the limited bandwidth available in the ISM band along with the noisy characteristics of the wireless environment and hidden terminal effects. In this paper we propose an enhancement for IEEE 802.11 standard that improves the WLAN support for multimedia applications. In the IEEE 802.11 PCF polling based protocol designed for multimedia applications support, the Point Coordinator (PC) polls each station in the Basic Service Area (BSA) individually. In the proposed SuperPoll approach the PC broadcasts at the beginning of the contention free period a SuperPoll, i.e., a message that includes the list of stations that will be polled during the current period. To improve the reliability of the polling based approach in a noisy environment, we propose to use a chaining mechanism in which each packet resends in its turn the SuperPoll message appended to its packet. We provide performance measurements of the proposed method in terms of channel efficiency and channel access time for multimedia applications that use the contention free period of IEEE 802.11 PCF. We notice that for noisy channels, the proposed method provides a dramatic throughput increase and delay decrease when compared with the Single Poll mechanism used in IEEE 802.11 PCF, thus providing better support for multimedia applications.     

A short-term fair MAC protocol for WLANs

Designing a medium access control (MAC) protocol that simultaneously provides high throughput and allows individual users to share limited spectrum resources fairly, especially in the short-term time horizon, is a challenging problem for wireless LANs. In this paper, we propose an efficient cooperative MAC protocol with very simple state information that considers only collisions, like the standard IEEE 802.11 MAC protocol. However, contrary to the IEEE 802.11 MAC, the cooperative MAC gives collided users priority to access the channel by assigning them shorter backoff counters and interframe-spaces than users who did not participate in the collision event. In other words, collided users are the only ones allowed to transmit in the following contention period. For the cooperative MAC protocol, we utilize an analytical throughput model to obtain the optimal parameter settings. Simulation results show that the cooperative MAC provides significant improvement in short-term fairness and access delay, while still providing high network throughput.     

Selfish MAC layer misbehavior in wireless networks

Wireless medium access control (MAC) protocols such as IEEE 802.11 use distributed contention resolution mechanisms for sharing the wireless channel. In this environment, selfish hosts that fail to adhere to the MAC protocol may obtain an unfair throughput share. For example, IEEE 802.11 requires hosts competing for access to the channel to wait for a "backoff" interval, randomly selected from a specified range/before initiating a transmission. Selfish hosts may wait for smaller backoff intervals than well-behaved hosts, thereby obtaining an unfair advantage. We present modifications to the IEEE 802.11 protocol to simplify detection of such selfish hosts and analyze the optimality of the chosen strategy. We also present a penalty scheme for punishing selfish misbehavior. We develop two misbehavior models to capture the behavior of misbehaving hosts. Simulation results under these misbehavior models indicate that our detection and penalty schemes are successful in handling MAC layer misbehavior.     

Busy tone contention protocol: a new high‐throughput and energy‐efficient wireless local area network medium access control protocol using busy tone

Design of an efficient wireless medium access control (MAC) protocol is a challenging task due to the time‐varying characteristics of wireless communication channel and different delay requirements in diverse applications. To support variable number of active stations and varying network load conditions, random access MAC protocols are employed. Existing wireless local area network (WLAN) protocol (IEEE 802.11) is found to be inefficient at high data rates because of the overhead associated with the contention resolution mechanism employed. The new amendments of IEEE 802.11 that support multimedia traffic (IEEE 802.11e) are at the expense of reduced data traffic network efficiency. In this paper, we propose a random access MAC protocol called busy tone contention protocol (BTCP) that uses out‐of‐band signals for contention resolution in WLANs. A few variants of this protocol are also proposed to meet the challenges in WLAN environments and application requirements. The proposed BTCP isolate multimedia traffics from background data transmissions and gives high throughput irrespective of the number of contending stations in the network. As a result, in BTCP, admission control of multimedia flows becomes simple and well defined. Studies of the protocol, both analytically and through simulations under various network conditions, have shown to give better performance in comparison with the IEEE 802.11 distributed coordination function. Copyright © 2011 John Wiley & Sons, Ltd.     

Enhanced high‐performance distributed coordination function for IEEE 802.11 multi‐rate LANs

To compensate for the effects of fading in wireless channels, IEEE 802.11 systems utilize a rate‐adaptation mechanism to accomplish a multi‐rate capability. However, the IEEE 802.11 distributed coordination function results in a fundamental performance anomaly in multi‐rate networks; namely, when stations with different transmission rates collide, the throughput performance of the high‐rate station is significantly degraded by the relatively longer channel occupancy time of the low‐rate station. This study resolves this problem through the use of an enhanced high‐performance distributed coordination function (EHDCF) protocol. While most existing solutions to the multi‐rate performance anomaly problem have the form of simple contention‐based protocols, EHDCF has two modes, namely a contending mode and an active mode. In the proposed protocol, new stations joining the network are assigned a contending mode, but switch to an active node (and are therefore permitted to transmit data packets) as soon as they have gained access to the channel. Having transmitted a data packet, the active node then selects the next transmission station in accordance with a probability‐based rule designed such that the high‐rate stations within the network receive a greater number of transmission opportunities than the low‐rate stations. The simulation results show that the EHDCF protocol not only yields a significant improvement in the network throughput but also guarantees the temporal fairness of all the stations. Copyright © 2009 John Wiley & Sons, Ltd.     

Airtime Fairness for IEEE 802.11 Multirate Networks

Under a multirate network scenario, the IEEE 802.11 DCF MAC fails to provide airtime fairness for all competing stations since the protocol is designed for ensuring max-min throughput fairness. As such, the maximum achievable throughput by any station gets bounded by the slowest transmitting peer. In this paper, we present an analytical model to study the delay and throughput characteristics of such networks so that the rate anomaly problem of IEEE DCF multirate networks could be mitigated. We call our proposal time fair CSMA (TFCSMA) which utilizes an interesting baseline property for estimating a target throughput for each competing station so that its minimum contention window could be adjusted in a distributed manner. As opposed to the previous work in this area, TFCSMA is ideally suited for practical scenarios where stations frequently adapt their data rates to changing channel conditions. In addition, TFCSMA also accounts for packet errors due to the time varying properties of the wireless channel. We thoroughly compare the performance of our proposed protocol with IEEE 802.11 and other existing protocols under different network scenarios and traffic conditions. Our comprehensive simulations validate the efficacy of our method toward providing high throughput and time fair channel allocation.     

A Distributed Mechanism for Power Saving in IEEE 802.11 Wireless LANs

The finite battery power of mobile computers represents one of the greatest limitations to the utility of portable computers. Furthermore, portable computers often need to perform power consuming activities, such as transmitting and receiving data by means of a random-access, wireless channel. The amount of power consumed to transfer the data on the wireless channel is negatively affected by the channel congestion level, and significantly depends on the MAC protocol adopted. This paper illustrates the design and the performance evaluation of a new mechanism that, by controlling the accesses to the shared transmission channel of a wireless LAN, leads each station to an optimal Power Consumption level. Specifically, we considered the Standard IEEE 802.11 Distributed Coordination Function (DCF) access scheme for WLANs. For this protocol we analytically derived the optimal average Power Consumption levels required for a frame transmission. By exploiting these analytical results, we define a Power Save, Distributed Contention Control (PS-DCC) mechanism that can be adopted to enhance the performance of the Standard IEEE 802.11 DCF protocol from a power saving standpoint. The performance of an IEEE 802.11 network enhanced with the PS-DCC mechanism has been investigated by simulation. Results show that the enhanced protocol closely approximates the optimal power consumption level, and provides a channel utilization close to the theoretical upper bound for the IEEE 802.11 protocol capacity. In addition, even in low load situations, the enhanced protocol does not introduce additional overheads with respect to the standard protocol.     

Enhanced binary exponential backoff algorithm for fair channel access in the ieee 802.11 medium access control protocol

The medium access control protocol determines system throughput in wireless mobile ad hoc networks following the ieee 802.11 standard. Under this standard, asynchronous data transmissions have a defined distributed coordination function that allows stations to contend for channel usage in a distributed manner via the carrier sensing multiple access with collision avoidance protocol. In distributed coordination function, a slotted binary exponential backoff (BEB) algorithm resolves collisions of packets transmitted simultaneously by different stations. The BEB algorithm prevents packet collisions during simultaneous access by randomizing moments at stations attempting to access the wireless channels. However, this randomization does not eliminate packet collisions entirely, leading to reduced system throughput and increased packet delay and drop. In addition, the BEB algorithm results in unfair channel access among stations. In this paper, we propose an enhanced binary exponential backoff algorithm to improve channel access fairness by adjusting the manner of increasing or decreasing the contention window based on the number of the successfully sent frames. We propose several configurations and use the NS2 simulator to analyze network performance. The enhanced binary exponential backoff algorithm improves channel access fairness, significantly increases network throughput capacity, and reduces packet delay and drop. Copyright © 2013 John Wiley & Sons, Ltd.     

A schedule‐based medium access control protocol for mobile wireless sensor networks

Recent advances in body area network technologies such as radio frequency identification and ham radio, to name a few, have introduced a huge gap between the use of current wireless sensor network technologies and specific needs of some important wireless sensor network applications such as medical care, disaster relief, or emergency preparedness and response. In these types of applications, the mobility of nodes can occur, leading to the challenge of mobility handling. In this paper, we address this challenge by prioritizing transmissions of mobile nodes over static nodes. This is achieved by using shorter contention windows in reservation slots for mobile nodes (the so‐called backoff technique) combined with a novel hybrid medium access control (MAC) protocol (the so‐called versatile MAC). The proposed protocol advocates channel reuse for bandwidth efficiency and management purpose. Through extensive simulations, our protocol is compared with other MAC alternatives such as time division multiple access and IEEE 802.11 with request to send/clear to send exchange, chosen as benchmarks. The performance metrics used are bandwidth utilization, fairness of medium access, and energy consumption. The superiority of versatile MAC against the studied benchmark protocols is established with respect to these metrics. Copyright © 2012 John Wiley & Sons, Ltd.     

A Beacon-Based Collision-Free Channel Access Scheme for IEEE 802.11 WLANs

In IEEE 802.11 based WLAN standard, distributed coordination function is the fundamental medium access control (MAC) technique. It employs a CSMA/CA with random binary exponential backoff algorithm and provides contention-based distributed channel access for stations to share the wireless medium. However, performance of this mechanism drops dramatically due to random structure of the backoff process, high collision probability and frame errors. That is why development of an efficient MAC protocol, providing both high throughput for data traffic and quality of service (QoS) support for real-time applications, has become a major focus in WLAN research. In this paper, we propose an adaptive beacon-based collision-free MAC adaptation. The proposed scheme makes use of beacon frames sent periodically by access point, lets stations enter the collision-free state and reduces the number of idle slots regardless of the number of stations and their traffic load (saturated or unsaturated) on the medium. Simulation results indicate that the proposed scheme dramatically enhances the overall throughput and supports QoS by reducing the delay, delay variation and dropping probability of frames.     

PCUP: pipelined cyclic upstream protocol over hybrid fiber coax

In order to bring the NII (National Information Infrastructure) into the home, the community cable TV networks have to be reengineered to support two-way interactive services. The authors propose the PCUP (pipelined cyclic upstream protocol) as the upstream MAC (medium access control) protocol for the HFC (hybrid fiber coax) community access network. The PCUP is designed with the intention of pipelining the upstream channel. This is achieved by proper station positioning, which measures the station propagation offset from the headend, and transmission scheduling which assigns each station a transmission starting time and duration in a cycle. By taking into account the propagation offsets and transmission lines, transmitted cells can appear back-to-back (i.e., pipelined) at the headend. Since only the active stations are scheduled to transmit in a cycle, a membership control mechanism, which runs a contention-based tree walk algorithm, is executed periodically to allow the stations to join or leave. The authors also compare the PCUP with various schemes proposed to the IEEE 802.14 committee