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.     

Supporting multimedia streaming and best‐effort data transmission over IEEE 802.11e EDCA

As demand for broadband multimedia wireless services increases, improving quality of service (QoS) of the widely deployed IEEE 802.11 wireless LAN (WLAN) has become crucial. To support the QoS required by a wide range of applications, the IEEE 802.11 working group has defined a new standard: IEEE 802.11e. In this paper, we propose a measurement‐based dynamic media time allocation (MBDMTA) scheme combined with a concatenating window scheme to support real‐time variable bit rate (rt‐VBR) video and best‐effort (BE) data transmission using IEEE 802.11e enhanced distributed channel access (EDCA). To provide the QoS guarantee for rt‐VBR video, the proposed MBDMTA scheme dynamically assigns channel time to the rt‐VBR video based on the estimate of the required network resources. On the other hand, the concatenating window scheme controls the contention window (CW) ranges of different priority flows such that real‐time services always have higher channel access probability, thus achieving the capability of preemptive priorities. In addition, the concatenating window scheme preserves fairness among flows of the same class and attains high channel utilization under different network conditions. Simulation results demonstrate that the throughput and delay performance improve significantly for the transmission of rt‐VBR video and BE traffic as compared to those for the 802.11e EDCA specification. It is also revealed that combining the two proposed schemes provides seamless integration and reliable transmission of digital video and data service within the 802.11e EDCA framework. Copyright © 2007 John Wiley & Sons, Ltd.     

A weighted fairness guarantee scheme based on node cooperation for multimedia WLAN mesh networks

In this paper, we focus on weighted fairness in multimedia WLAN mesh networks. Based on the analysis of the fairness problem of IEEE 802.11e Enhanced Distributed Channel Access (EDCA) scheme in WLAN mesh networks, we propose a weighted fairness guarantee scheme (WFGS), which provides weighted fairness for multimedia flows with different QoS requirements through node cooperation. WFGS piggybacks extra field in RTS/CTS frames to declare the channel occupation ratio of each flow. Accordingly, the transmitters can get the neighboring flows’ channel occupation ratio via overhearing the RTS/CTS frames from its neighbors, and cooperatively adjust the contention window size to achieve weighted fairness among the flows. Also, to reliably reserve transmissions, an adaptive power control based RTS/CTS handshake mechanism is introduced. Simulation results show that compared with EDCA scheme, WFGS can effectively resolve the collisions induced by the carrier interference and thereby guarantee both the short-term and long-term weighted fairness among multimedia flows.     

一种新的用于IEEE 802.11e EDCA中提供QoS的方法

该文提出了一种新的应用于IEEE 802.11e EDCA (Enhanced Distributed Channel Access)中提供QoS(Quality of Service)的方法。这种方法是将几个时隙组合起来构成一个超时隙,每个超时隙的开始分配给不同的业务来进行发包。时隙的分配是根据各种业务的不同优先级来实现的。这种方法可以保证高优先级业务具有较大的吞吐量,较少的MAC延时和较低的丢包率。与802.11e EDCA草案中提出的不同冲突窗口大小的方法相比,这种方法具有可以提高吞吐量,降低丢包率,并能减小站点数目变化对高优先级业务吞吐量的影响等优点。这种新的提供QoS的方法优于不同冲突窗口大小的方法,在IEEE 802.11e EDCA中应用超时隙方法可以大大提高EDCA的性能。     

Proportional bandwidth allocation with consideration of delay constraint over IEEE 802.11e-based wireless mesh networks

Wireless mesh networks (WMNs) extend the limited transmission coverage of wireless LANs by enabling users to connect to the Internet via a multi-hop relay service provided by wireless mesh routers. In such networks the quality of experience (QoE) depends on both the user location relative to the Internet gateway and the traffic load. Various channel access or queue management schemes have been proposed for achieving throughput fairness among WMN users. However, delay and bandwidth utilization efficiency of such schemes may be unacceptable for real-time applications. Accordingly, the present study proposes a proportional bandwidth allocation scheme with a delay constraint consideration for enhancing the QoE of users of WMNs based on the IEEE 802.11e standard. An analytical model of the proposed scheme is provided. Moreover, the performance of the proposed scheme is systematically compared with that of existing bandwidth allocation methods. The simulation results show that the proposed scheme outperforms previously proposed schemes in terms of both an improved throughput fairness among the WMN users and a smaller end-to-end transmission delay.     

Saturation Throughput Analysis of IEEE 802.11e EDCA Through Analytical Model

The IEEE 802.11e EDCA is designed to provide quality of support for real time applications with stringent latency and throughput requirements. Theoretical frameworks for analysis of throughput performance of wireless LAN employing exponential back-off exist extensively. Several models rely on simplification assumptions that preclude their direct applicability to the enhanced distributed coordination access (EDCA) which uses heterogeneous protocol parameters, while other models are exceedingly complex to analyze. In this paper, a tractable analytical model is proposed for saturation throughput of the IEEE 802.11e EDCA. The prioritization through channel access parameters including the AIFS and contention window is catered for within a three dimensional Markov chain. The integration of back-off counter freezing and retry limit enhance the models precision. Its validation is done by simulation on NS-2. Practical applicability of the model is established based on accuracy and computational efficiency. The model is utilized for throughput analysis of the EDCA under saturated traffic loads.     

Exploiting the channel using uninterrupted collision‐free MAC adaptation over IEEE 802.11 WLANs

IEEE 802.11 wireless local area networks (WLANs) have reached an important stage and become a common technology for wireless access due to its low cost, ease of deployment, and mobility support. In parallel with the extensive growth of WLANs, the development of an efficient medium access control protocol that provides both high throughput performance for data traffic and quality of service support for real‐time applications has become a major focus in WLAN research. The IEEE 802.11 Distributed Coordination Functions (DCF/EDCA) provide contention‐based distributed channel access mechanisms for stations to share the wireless medium. However, performance of these mechanisms may drop dramatically because of high collision probabilities as the number of active stations increases. In this paper, we propose an adaptive collision‐free MAC adaptation. The proposed scheme prevents collisions and allows stations to enter the collision‐free state regardless of the traffic load (saturated or unsaturated) and the number of stations on the medium. Simulation results show that the proposed scheme dramatically enhances the overall throughput and supports quality of service for real‐time services over 802.11‐based WLANs. Copyright © 2013 John Wiley & Sons, Ltd.     

A Distributed Channel Access Scheme with Guaranteed Priority and Enhanced Fairness

Although the IEEE 802.11e enhanced distributed channel access (EDCA) can differentiate high priority traffic such as real-time voice from low priority traffic such as delay- tolerant data, it can only provide statistical priority, and is characterized by inherent short-term unfairness. In this paper, we propose a new distributed channel access scheme through minor modifications to EDCA. Guaranteed priority is provided to real time voice traffic over data traffic, while a certain service time and short-term fairness enhancement are provided to data traffic. We also present analytical models to calculate the percentage of time to serve voice traffic and the achieved data throughput. Both analysis and simulation demonstrate the effectiveness of our proposed scheme.     

Improving protocol capacity by scheduling random access on WLANs

The MAC protocol is important, especially for wireless LAN because of limited bandwidth. A great deal of research has been carried out and some of proposed schemes are effective. Specifically, considerable effort has been devoted to improving the IEEE 802.11 standard which is utilized widely. Previous theoretical analysis gave the upper bound of IEEE 802.11 DCF throughput which is far below the channel capacity and corresponding algorithm was proposed, which can achieve the throughput close to the upper bound. It seems that we cannot expect to enhance the throughput much more in a usual way. In the meantime, besides throughput, there are some other issues for DCF such as fairness and QoS support. However, except for several hybrid protocols, most proposals were either based on contention mode or schedule mode and neither of the two modes has possessed the good characters of the other. In this paper, we propose a new MAC scheme used for DCF (with no control node) that dynamically adapts to traffic changes without degradation of delay in the case of low traffic load and achieves high throughput which is close to transmission capacity in saturated case. The key idea is to divide the virtual frame into two parts, i.e., schedule part and contention part, and to enable each node to reserve a slot in schedule part. Unlike conventional hybrid protocols, every node does not have to intentionally reset any parameter according to the changing traffic load except its queue length. A distinguishing feature of this scheme is the novel way of allowing WLANs to work with low delay as in the contention-based mode and achieve high throughput as in the schedule-based mode without complicated on-line estimation required in previous schemes. This makes our scheme simpler and more reliable. Through an analysis of simulation results, we show that our scheme can greatly improve the throughput with low delay.     

Performance analysis of IEEE 802.11e contention-based channel access

The new standard IEEE 802.11e is specified to support quality-of-service in wireless local area networks. A comprehensive study of the performance of enhanced distributed channel access (EDCA), the fundamental medium access control mechanism in IEEE 802.11e, is reported in this paper. We present our development of an analytical model, in which most new features of the EDCA such as virtual collision, different arbitration interframe space (AIFS), and different contention window are taken into account. Based on the model, we analyze the throughput performance of differentiated service traffic and propose a recursive method capable of calculating the mean access delay. Service differentiation functionality and effectiveness of the EDCA are investigated through extensive numerical and simulation results. The model and the analysis provide an in-depth understanding and insights into the protocol and the effects of different parameters on the performance.     

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.     

Simulation and analysis of node throughput using smart antenna in wireless mesh networks

Smart antenna technology is introduced to wireless mesh networks. Smart antennas based wider-range access medium access control (MAC) protocol (SWAMP) is used as MAC protocol for IEEE 802.11 mesh networks in this study. The calculation method of node throughput in chain and arbitrary topology is proposed under nodes fairness guarantee. Network scale and interference among nodes are key factors that influence node throughput. Node distribution pattern near the gateway also affects the node throughput. Experiment based on network simulator-2 (NS-2) simulation platform compares node throughput between smart antenna scenario and omni-antenna scenario. As smart antenna technology reduces the bottle collision domain, node throughput increases observably.     

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.     

On the unfairness in IEEE 802.11e networks: Desynchronization of its medium access mechanism

Since the advent of the first IEEE 802.11 standard, several papers have proposed means of providing QoS to IEEE 802.11 networks and evaluate various traffic-prioritization mechanisms. Nevertheless, studies on the assignment of AIFS times defined in IEEE 802.11e reveal that the various priority levels work in a synchronized manner. The studies show that, under large loads of high-priority traffic, EDCA starves low-priority frames, which is undesirable. We argue that QoS traffic needs to be prioritized, but users sending best-effort frames should also obtain the expected service. High-priority traffic can also suffer performance degradation when using EDCA because of heavy loads of low-priority frames. Thus, we have proposed a mechanism based on desynchronizing the IEEE 802.11e working procedure. It prevents stations that belong to different priority classes from attempting simultaneous transmission, prioritizes independent collision groups and achieves better short-term and long-term channel access fairness. We have evaluated the proposal based on extensive analytical and simulation results. It prevents the strangulation of low-priority traffic, and, moreover, reduces the degradation of high-priority traffic with the increased presence of low-priority frames.     

Performance Analysis of Contention Based Medium Access Control Protocols

This paper studies the performance of contention based medium access control (MAC) protocols. In particular, a simple and accurate technique for estimating the throughput of the IEEE 802.11 DCF protocol is developed. The technique is based on a rigorous analysis of the Markov chain that corresponds to the time evolution of the back-off processes at the contending nodes. An extension of the technique is presented to handle the case where service differentiation is provided with the use of heterogeneous protocol parameters, as, for example, in IEEE 802.11e EDCA protocol. Our results provide new insights into the operation of such protocols. The techniques developed in the paper are applicable to a wide variety of contention based MAC protocols.      

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.     

Improving Transport Layer Performance in Multihop Ad Hoc Networks by Exploiting MAC Layer Information

The traditional TCP congestion control mechanism encounters a number of new problems and suffers a poor performance when the IEEE 802.11 MAC protocol is used in multihop ad hoc networks. Many of the problems result from medium contention at the MAC layer. In this paper, we first illustrate that severe medium contention and congestion are intimately coupled, and TCP's congestion control algorithm becomes too coarse in its granularity, causing throughput instability and excessively long delay. Further, we illustrate TCP's severe unfairness problem due to the medium contention and the tradeoff between aggregate throughput and fairness. Then, based on the novel use of channel busyness ratio, a more accurate metric to characterize the network utilization and congestion status, we propose a new wireless congestion control protocol (WCCP) to efficiently and fairly support the transport service in multihop ad hoc networks. In this protocol, each forwarding node along a traffic flow exercises the inter-node and intra-node fair resource allocation and determines the MAC layer feedback accordingly. The end-to-end feedback, which is ultimately determined by the bottleneck node along the flow, is carried back to the source to control its sending rate. Extensive simulations show that WCCP significantly outperforms traditional TCP in terms of channel utilization, delay, and fairness, and eliminates the starvation problem     

Congestion-aware fair rate control in wireless mesh networks

This paper presents a fair and efficient rate control mechanism, referred to as congestion-aware fair rate control (CFRC), for IEEE 802.11s-based wireless mesh networks. Existing mechanisms usually concentrate on achieving fairness and achieve a poor throughput. This mainly happens due to the synchronous rate reduction of neighboring links or nodes of a congested node without considering whether they actually share the same bottleneck or not. Furthermore, the achievable throughput depends on the network load, and an efficient fair rate is achievable when the network load is balanced. Therefore, existing mechanisms usually achieve a fair rate determined by the mostly loaded network region. CFRC uses an AIMD-based rate control mechanism which enforces a rate-bound to the links that use the same bottleneck. To achieve the maximum achievable rate, it balances the network load in conjunction with the routing mechanism. Furthermore, it allows the intra-mesh flows to utilize the network capacity, and the intra-mesh flows achieve a high throughput. Finally, we investigate the performance of CFRC using simulation in ns-2, and the results demonstrate that CFRC increases the throughput with the desired fairness.     

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.