Robust Detection of Selfish Misbehavior in Wireless Networks

The CSMA/CA protocols are designed under the assumption that all participant nodes would abide to the protocol rules. This is of particular importance in distributed protocols such as the IEEE 802.11 distributed coordinating function (DCF), in which nodes control their own backoff parameters. In this work, we propose a method to detect selfish misbehaving terminals that may deliberately modify its backoff window to gain unfair access to the network resources. We develop nonparametric batch and sequential detectors based on the Kolmogorov-Smirnov (K-S) statistics that do not require any modification on the existing CSMA/CA protocols, and we apply it to detect misbehaviors in an IEEE 802.11 DCF network using the ns-2 simulator. We compare the performance of the proposed detectors with the optimum detectors with perfect information about the misbehavior strategy, for both the batch case (based on the Neyman-Pearson test), and the sequential case (based on Wald's sequential probability ratio test). We show that the proposed nonparametric detectors have a performance comparable to the optimum detectors for the majority of misbehaviors (the more severe) without any knowledge of the misbehavior strategies.     

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.     

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.     

An Adaptive Learning Scheme for Medium Access with Channel Reservation in Wireless Networks

Providing effective medium access for wireless networks is a challenging task. Most of the existing protocols of IEEE 802.11 Medium Access Control (MAC) work towards the goal of achieving effective channel access by developing various backoff procedures. In this paper, we make an attempt to develop a new medium access protocol named Learning Automata (LA) based Wireless Channel Reservation (LAWCR). We use an LA approach to implement reservation for channel access for single hop wireless networks. Also, sequence procedure is used to improve the reservation mechanism. The performance of the proposed LAWCR scheme show significant improvements over the legacy DCF protocol with respect to important criteria such as the average time spent in the buffer and the throughput.     

Enhancing IEEE 802.11 MAC via a Sender-Initiated Reservation

The IEEE 802.11 MAC adopted a collision avoidance mechanism in which contending stations should wait a random backoff time before sending a frame. While the algorithm reduces the collision probability in general, a large number of stations may still experience heavy collisions thus decrease the throughput. In this paper, we propose a simple reservation scheme for enhancing the performance of multiple access in 802.11 MAC: when a transmitter sends a frame, if it has another frame to send in its output queue, it may reserve an additional time that is needed to send the next frame and receive an ACK for the frame. Thus a sender can occupy the medium for two data frames, while reducing the collision probability and improving channel utilization via the reservation. We develop a mathematical model to analyze the performance of proposed scheme, and perform simulations to evaluate its performance compared with the original MAC.     

A Novel Medium Access Control for Ad hoc Networks Based on OFDM System

1IntroductionIn Ad hoc networks , the nodes share the wirelesschannel under the control of media access control proto-col . Currently,there are two types of MAC protocolsproposedfor Ad hoc networks . The first is hand-shak-ing protocol such as IEEE 802 .11 MAC protocol[1 ~4]and MACAW[5], which controls the access procedureby exchanging the control packets among the activenodes . The secondis busy-tone protocol that introducesadditional busy tone signal to control the medium ac-cess . S…     

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.     

A novel scheme to prevent MAC layer misbehavior in IEEE 802.11 ad hoc networks

The characteristics of ad hoc networks, such as the absence of infrastructure, dynamic topology, shared wireless medium and resource-constrained environment pose various security challenges. Most of the previous research focused on the detection of the misbehavior after it occurred. However, in this paper we propose a new way of thinking to evade the occurrence of misbehavior. In our scheme, Local Most Trustworthy node (LMT node) is allowed to assign the backoff values to originator, rather than permitting the originator to choose the backoff values by itself. With this MAC layer misbehavior avoidance mechanism, the misuse of the backoff in MAC layer in 802.11 DCF can be prevented.     

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     

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.     

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.     

An accurate two dimensional Markov chain model for IEEE 802.11n DCF

According to the amendment 5 of the IEEE 802.11 standard, 802.11n still uses the distributed coordination function (DCF) access method as mandatory function in access points and wireless stations (essentially to assure compatibility with previous 802.11 versions). This article provides an accurate two dimensional Markov chain model to investigate the throughput performance of IEEE 802.11n networks when frame aggregation and block acknowledgements (Block-ACK) schemes are adopted. Our proposed model considered packet loss either from collisions or channel errors. Further, it took anomalous slots and the freezing of backoff counter into account. The contribution of this work was the analysis of the DCF performance under error-prone channels considering both 802.11n MAC schemes and the anomalous slot in the backoff process. To validate the accuracy of our proposed model, we compared its mathematical simulation results with those obtained using the 802.11n DCF in the network simulator (NS-2) and with other analytical models investigating the performance of 802.11n DCF. Simulation results proved the accuracy of our model.     

Performance analysis of the IEEE 802.11 distributed coordinationfunction

The IEEE has standardized the 802.11 protocol for wireless local area networks. The primary medium access control (MAC) technique of 802.11 is called the distributed coordination function (DCF). The DCF is a carrier sense multiple access with collision avoidance (CSMA/CA) scheme with binary slotted exponential backoff. This paper provides a simple, but nevertheless extremely accurate, analytical model to compute the 802.11 DCF throughput, in the assumption of finite number of terminals and ideal channel conditions. The proposed analysis applies to both the packet transmission schemes employed by DCF, namely, the basic access and the RTS/CTS access mechanisms. In addition, it also applies to a combination of the two schemes, in which packets longer than a given threshold are transmitted according to the RTS/CTS mechanism. By means of the proposed model, we provide an extensive throughput performance evaluation of both access mechanisms of the 802.11 protocol     

IEEE 802.11 protocol: design and performance evaluation of anadaptive backoff mechanism

In WLANs, the medium access control (MAC) protocol is the main element that determines the efficiency of sharing the limited communication bandwidth of the wireless channel. The fraction of channel bandwidth used by successfully transmitted messages gives a good indication of the protocol efficiency, and its maximum value is referred to as protocol capacity. In a previous paper we have derived the theoretical limit of the IEEE 802.11 MAC protocol capacity. In addition, we showed that if a station has an exact knowledge of the network status, it is possible to tune its backoff algorithm to achieve a protocol capacity very close to its theoretical bound. Unfortunately, in a real case, a station does not have an exact knowledge of the network and load configurations (i.e., number of active stations and length of the message transmitted on the channel) but it can only estimate it. In this work we analytically study the performance of the IEEE 802.11 protocol with a dynamically tuned backoff based on the estimation of the network status. Results obtained indicate that under stationary traffic and network configurations (i.e., constant average message length and fixed number of active stations), the capacity of the enhanced protocol approaches the theoretical limits in all the configurations analyzed. In addition, by exploiting the analytical model, we investigate the protocol performance in transient conditions (i.e., when the number of active stations sharply changes)     

一种基于实时优化思想的多址接入协议性能分析

该文提出了一种基于慢退避和实时优化思想的碰撞减少多址接入CRMA (Collision Reduced Multiple Access)协议。CRMA协议将实时优化的思想同慢退避的思想相结合,有效地解决了IEEE 802.11协议二进制指数退避算法成功发送数据帧后没有记录网络当前繁忙程度的缺点,能够更准确地记录数据帧成功发送后高负荷网络的退避阶数,降低数据帧接入信道的碰撞概率,提高无线信道的利用率。新的多址接入协议能够与现有的IEEE 802.11协议完全兼容,具有简单、无开销、完全分布性和自适应性的特点。分析和仿真结果表明,CRMA协议较之改进前的IEEE 802.11协议和其它最新的多址接入算法能够更有效地利用网络中已有的信息,更准确地估计网络当前的竞争状态,表现出更好的网络性能。     

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.     

Analytical modeling of bidirectional multi‐channel IEEE 802.11 MAC protocols

This paper presents an analytical approach to model the bi‐directional multi‐channel IEEE 802.11 MAC protocols (Bi‐MCMAC) for ad hoc networks. Extensive simulation work has been done for the performance evaluation of IEEE 802.11 MAC protocols. Since simulation has several limitations, this work is primarily based on the analytical approach. The objective of this paper is to show analytically the performance advantages of Bi‐MCMAC protocol over the classical IEEE 802.11 MAC protocol. The distributed coordination function (DCF) mode of medium access control (MAC) is considered in the modeling. Two different channel scheduling strategies, namely, random channel selection and fastest channel first selection strategy are also presented in the presence of multiple channels with different transmission rates. M/G/1 queue is used to model the protocols, and stochastic reward nets (SRNs) are employed as a modeling technique as it readily captures the synchronization between events in the DCF mode of access. The average system throughput, mean delay, and server utilization of each MAC protocol are evaluated using the SRN formalism. We also validate our analytical model by comparison with simulation results. The results obtained through the analytical modeling approach illustrate the performance advantages of Bi‐MCMAC protocols with the fastest channel first scheduling strategy over the classical IEEE 802.11 protocol for TCP traffic in wireless ad hoc networks. Copyright © 2010 John Wiley & Sons, Ltd.     

A novel contention-based MAC protocol with channel reservation for wireless LANs

In this paper, we present a novel contention-based medium access control (MAC) protocol, namely, the Channel Reservation MAC (CR-MAC) protocol. The CR-MAC protocol takes advantage of the overhearing feature of the shared wireless channel to exchange channel reservation information with little extra overhead. Each node can reserve the channel for the next packet waiting in the transmission queue during the current transmission. We theoretically prove that the CR-MAC protocol achieves much higher throughput than the IEEE 802.11 RTS/CTS mode under saturated traffic. The protocol also reduces packet collision, thereby saving the energy for retransmission. We evaluate the protocol by simulations under both saturated traffic and unsaturated traffic. Our simulation results not only validate the theoretical analysis on saturated throughput, but also reveal other good features of the protocol. For example, under saturated traffic, both the saturated throughput and fairness measures of the CR-MAC are very close to the theoretical upper bounds. Moreover, under unsaturated traffic, the protocol also achieves higher throughput and better fairness than IEEE 802.11 RTS/CTS.