Learning automata-based polling protocols for wireless LANs

A learning automata-based polling (LEAP) protocol for wireless LANs, capable of operating efficiently under bursty traffic conditions, is introduced. We consider an infrastructure wireless LAN, where the access point (AP) is located at the center of a cell which comprises a number of mobile stations. According to the proposed protocol, the mobile station that is granted permission to transmit is selected by the AP by means of a learning automaton. The learning automaton takes into account the network feedback information in order to update the choice probability of each mobile station. It is proved that the learning algorithm asymptotically tends to assign to each station a portion of the bandwidth proportional to the station's needs. LEAP is compared to the randomly addressed polling and group randomly addressed polling protocols and is shown to exhibit superior performance under bursty traffic.     

Extended sliding frame R-Aloha: Medium access control (MAC) protocol for mobile networks

Proliferation of mobile communication devices necessitates a reliable and efficient medium access control (MAC) protocol. In this paper, A MAC protocol, called extended sliding frame reservation Aloha (ESFRA), based on sliding frame R-Aloha (SFRA) is proposed for network access technique. ESFRA is particularly designed to solve the mobile hidden station (MHS) problem in a mobile ad hoc network (MANET) by including relative locations of transmitting stations in the packet frame information header. The MHS problem is unique in mobile networks and occurs if a mobile station enters in a collision free zone of any ongoing communication and disturbs this communication with its transmission. In addition to the MHS problem, ESFRA simultaneously solves hidden station, exposed station, and neighborhood capture problems typically observed in wireless networks. A Markov model of ESFRA is developed and provided here to estimate throughput, delay and collision probabilities of the proposed protocol. The Markov modeling is extended to the analysis of SFRA and IEEE 802.11 to compare these competing MAC protocols with ESFRA. The analysis shows that ESFRA decreases frame transmission delay, increases throughput, and reduces collision probabilities compared to IEEE 802.11 and SFRA. ESFRA improves the network throughput 28 percent compared to that of IEEE 802.11, and 33 percent compared to that of SFRA. The improved performance is obtained at the expense of the synchronization compared to IEEE 802.11, but there is virtually no extra cost compared to SFRA.     

Carrier‐sense‐assisted adaptive learning MAC protocols for distributed wireless LANs

A Carrier‐sense‐assisted adaptive learning MAC protocol for wireless LANs, capable of operating efficiently in bursty traffic wireless networks with unreliable channel feedback, is introduced. According to the proposed protocol, the mobile station that is granted permission to transmit is selected by means of learning automata. At each station, the learning automaton takes into account the network feedback information in order to update the choice probability of each mobile station. The proposed protocol utilizes carrier sensing in order to reduce the collisions that are caused by different decisions at the various mobile stations due to the unreliable channel feedback. Simulation results show satisfactory performance of the proposed protocol compared to similar MAC protocols. Copyright © 2005 John Wiley & Sons, Ltd.     

A self-adaptive protocol for broadcast LAN's with variable packet length

An adaptive medium access control (MAC) protocol for broadcast networks is introduced, which can operate efficiently under highly bursty traffic conditions and can handle stations transmitting packets of arbitrary length. The proposed Variable Packet Length Adaptive Protocol (VPLAP) belongs to the family of learning-automata-based protocols, which resolves most drawbacks that fixed-assignment protocols like time-division multiple access (TDMA) and RTDMA have. LTDMA, although belonging to this same family, suffers from reduced channel usage, wasted timeslots as well as network equipment overloading due to its fixed-sized timeslots. VPLAP, on the other hand, is tested using real LAN traffic traces and is proved not only to be successfully resolving the above issues but also being able to achieve a high throughput-delay performance when operating under realistic traffic conditions.     

一种自组网功率控制算法及分析

无线自组网中的移动节点大多依靠电池提供能量,因此能量是影响无线自组网性能的一个很大的瓶颈,作为事实上的无线自组网媒体接入协议,802.11并没有动态调整传输功率的能力,大大限制了网络的生存时间。采用功率控制可以提高节点的功率使用效率,减少相邻节点间的干扰,改善网络的性能。在802.11基础上提出一种基于信噪比的动态传输功率控制算法。通过进行计算机仿真,与802.11协议相比,在保持吞吐量性能的前提下,大大减少了节点的功率消耗,提高了节点的能量利用率。     

Learning-automata-based TDMA protocols for broadcast communicationsystems with bursty traffic

A learning automata-based time-division multiple-access protocol for broadcast networks, which is capable of operating efficiently under bursty traffic conditions, is introduced. According to the proposed protocol, the station which grants permission to transmit at each time slot is selected by means of learning automata. The learning automata update the choice probability of each station according to the network feedback information in such a way that it asymptotically tends to be proportional to the probability that this station is ready. In this manner, the number of idle slots is minimized and the network performance is significantly improved. Furthermore, the portion of the bandwidth assigned to each station is dynamically adapted to the station's needs     

An MAC protocol supporting multiple traffic over mobile ad hoc networks

This letter presents the design and performance of a multi-channel MAC protocol that supports multiple traffics for IEEE 802.11 mobile ad-hoc networks.The dynamic channel selection scheme by receiver decision is implemented and the number of the data channel is independent of the network topology.The priority for real-time traffic is assured by the proposed adaptive back off algorithm and different IFS.The protocol is evaluated by simulation and the results have shown that it can support multiple traffics and the performance is better than the performance that IEEE 802.11 standard provides.     

Does the IEEE 802.11 MAC protocol work well in multihop wireless adhoc networks?

The IEEE 802.11 MAC protocol is the standard for wireless LANs; it is widely used in testbeds and simulations for wireless multihop ad hoc networks. However, this protocol was not designed for multihop networks. Although it can support some ad hoc network architecture, it is not intended to support the wireless mobile ad hoc network, in which multihop connectivity is one of the most prominent features. In this article we focus on the following question: can the IEEE 802.11 MAC protocol function well in multihop networks? By presenting several serious problems encountered in an IEEE 802.11-based multihop network and revealing the in-depth cause of these problems, we conclude that the current version of this wireless LAN protocol does not function well in multihop ad hoc networks. We thus doubt whether the WaveLAN-based system is workable as a mobile ad hoc testbed     

Performance evaluation of multihop ad hoc WLANs

Ongoing technological advances in portable devices, coupled with the need for continuous connectivity while mobile, have made ad hoc networks a compelling research and development topic, particularly in a challenging multimedia multihop scenario. The ability of IEEE 802.11's ad hoc mode of operation, as a dominating wireless local area network (WLAN) protocol, to serve multihop networks requires thorough investigation. In this article, through considering crucial real-life physical phenomena and avoiding as many confining assumptions as possible, system performance measures such as delay and packet failure rate are evaluated. As a result, the importance of adequate selection of the system parameters toward performance improvement is underscored. Moreover, the simulation results imply that by complementing through priority provisions, coordination, route reservation, clustering, and optimum channel coding considerations, the IEEE 802.11 medium access control (MAC) protocol can survive in a multihop scenario. The custom simulation environment developed features modularity, comprising traffic generator, mobility, wireless channel, and IEEE 802.11 protocol modules, and is capable of accommodating many more of the physical phenomena involved.     

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.     

QoS provided by the IEEE 802.11 wireless LAN to advanced data applications: a simulation analysis

IEEE 802.11 is a Media Access Control (MAC) protocol which has been standardized by IEEE for Wireless Local Area Networks (WLANs). The IEEE 802.11 MAC protocol offers two types of services to its users: synchronous and asynchronous. This paper presents an in‐depth analysis, by simulation, of the asynchronous part alone. The analysis is performed by considering station data traffic patterns (hereafter advanced data traffic) which have a very similar shape to traffic generated by WWW applications. We carried out the simulation by taking into consideration two classes of scenarios: balanced and unbalanced. In the former class each station has the same offered load while in the latter class a specific station is more loaded than the others. Our conclusion is that the IEEE 802.11 MAC protocol performs satisfactorily for both classes of scenarios, although performance measures with advanced traffic are worse than the corresponding performance measures with Poissonian traffic. Furthermore, we broadened our analysis to include higher medium capacities than those planned (i.e., 1 and 2 Mbit/sec) up to 10 Mbit/sec. This part of the analysis shows that the IEEE 802.11 MAC protocol is not adequate to work at speeds planned for the forthcoming ATM Wireless LAN. This revised version was published online in August 2006 with corrections to the Cover Date.     

E‐MAC: an elastic MAC layer for IEEE 802.11 networks

We present a system for real‐time traffic support in infrastructure and ad hoc IEEE 802.11 networks. The proposed elastic MAC (E‐MAC) protocol provides a distributed transmission schedule for stations with real‐time traffic requirements, while allowing a seamless coexistence with standard IEEE 802.11 clients, protecting best‐effort 802.11 traffic from starvation by means of admission control policies. Our scheduling decisions are based on an ‘elastic’ transmission opportunity (TXOP) assignment which allows for efficient wireless resource usage: whenever a real‐time station does not use the assigned TXOP, the other real‐time stations can take over the unused access opportunity, thus preventing the well‐known inefficiencies of static time division multiple access (TDMA) schemes. Unlike other TDMA‐based solutions for 802.11, E‐MAC does not require a tight synchronization among the participating clients, thus allowing its implementation on commodity WLAN hardware via minor software changes at the client side, and no changes at the access points (APs). We studied the performance of our mechanism via ns‐2 simulations and a mathematical model, showing that it outperforms IEEE 802.11e in terms of throughput, delay, and jitter. We finally provide a proof of concept through the results obtained in a real testbed where we implemented the E‐MAC protocol. Copyright © 2011 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.     

IEEE 802.11在无线自组网中的应用研究

深入分析了IEEE 802.11 DCF机制应用于无线自组网存在的固有缺陷及潜在原因,并阐明了数据流竞争、物理层机制对MAC协议性能的影响。IEEE 802.11 DCF是针对全连通adhoc网络结构设计的,分析表明,要在实际的多跳无线自组网中应用还存在很多问题需要解决。在此基础上提出了将IEEE 802.11有效应用于多跳无线自组网的进一步研究方向。     

A simple distributed PRMA for MANETs

With the rapid development of Global Positioning System (GPS) technology and its applications, synchronization between terminals in mobile ad hoc environments becomes feasible at a low cost. Thus, slotted-channel-based medium access control (MAC) schemes like time division multiple access (TDMA) also become interesting for mobile ad hoc networks (MANETs). In this paper, we extend the classical centralized and slotted packet reservation multiple access (PRMA) scheme to a simple distributed PRMA (D-PRMA) as a MAC scheme for MANETs, with emphasis on voice application support. The major efforts of D-PRMA include 1) a simple slot reservation mechanism for voice traffic at the level of "talkspurt" without relying on any central entity and 2) a simple solution for the hidden and exposed terminal problems uniquely present in wireless ad hoc environments. The performance of D-PRMA has been investigated by analysis and computer simulations in comparison with IEEE 802.11. The results show that D-PRMA is much more suitable than IEEE 802.11 for voice application     

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.     

A Load-Balancing and Push-Out Scheme for Supporting QoS in MANETs

Currently, mobile ad hoc networks (MANETs) lack load-balancing capabilities, and thus, they fail to provide good performance especially in the case of a large volume of traffic. Ad hoc networks lack also service differentiation. However, in these wireless environments, where channel conditions are variable and bandwidth is scarce, the differentiated services developed for the Internet are suboptimal without lower layers' support. The IEEE 802.11 standard for Wireless LANs is the most widely used WLAN standard today. It has a mode of operation that can be used to provide service differentiation, but it has been shown to perform badly. In this paper, we present a simple but very effective method for support Quality of Service, by the use of load-balancing and push-out scheme. This approach offers to the mobile node: the ability to alleviate congestion by traffic distribution of excessive load, and to support priority of packets in the single MAC buffer. We evaluate the performance of our algorithm and compare it with the original IEEE 802.11b protocol. Simulation results show that this new approach reduces packet loss rate and increases throughput as well as provides service differentiation in the MAC layer.     

A MAC Protocol for Bursty Traffic Ad-Hoc Wireless LANs with Energy Efficiency

A Self-Adaptive Low Power MAC protocol with carrier sensing for ad-hoc Wireless LANs (WLANs), which is capable of operating efficiently under bursty traffic is proposed in this letter. The protocol utilizes a Learning Automaton structure at each station of the WLAN. Each such structure uses the network feedback to select the mobile station that will transmit. A low-power mode is implemented in order to significantly reduce the energy consumption of the protocol. Simulation results reveal that the low power mode of the proposed protocol reduces the average energy consumption at the mobile stations by as much as 70%.     

Adaptive MAC protocols for broadcast networks with bursty traffic

An adaptive medium access control protocol for broadcast networks, which is capable of operating efficiently under bursty traffic conditions, is introduced. According to the proposed protocol, the station which grants permission to transmit at each time slot is selected by taking into account the network feedback information. In this way, the number of idle slots is minimized and the network performance is significantly improved. Furthermore, the portion of the bandwidth assigned to each station is dynamically adapted to the station's needs.     

The slow start power controlled MAC protocol for mobile ad hoc networks and its performance analysis

We propose and evaluate the performance of a new MAC-layer protocol for mobile ad hoc networks, called the Slow Start Power Controlled (abbreviated SSPC) protocol. SSPC improves on IEEE 802.11 by using power control for the RTS/CTS and DATA frame transmissions, so as to reduce energy consumption and increase network throughput and lifetime. In our scheme the transmission power used for the RTS frames is not constant, but follows a slow start principle. The CTS frames, which are sent at maximum transmission power, prevent the neighbouring nodes from transmitting their DATA frames at power levels higher than a computed threshold, while allowing them to transmit at power levels less than that threshold. Reduced energy consumption is achieved by adjusting the node transmission power to the minimum required value for reliable reception at the receiving node, while increase in network throughput is achieved by allowing more transmissions to take place simultaneously. The slow start principle used for calculating the appropriate DATA frames transmission power and the possibility of more simultaneous collision-free transmissions differentiate the SSPC protocol from the other MAC solutions proposed for IEEE 802.11. Simulation results indicate that the SSPC protocol achieves a significant reduction in power consumption, average packet delay and frequency of RTS frame collisions, and a significant increase in network throughput and received-to-sent packets ratio compared to IEEE 802.11 protocol.