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

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

Power-saving mechanisms for mobile devices in wireless communications

In wireless communications, a sleep mode is commonly used to save power for mobile stations (MS). When there is no traffic to transmit, an MS periodically switches to sleep mode. Obviously, the performance of a power-saving mechanism depends on its sleep mode scheduling algorithm and the traffic characteristics of the user. In real systems, the power-saving mechanism of IEEE802.11 WLAN uses a constant sleep interval, and the IEEE802.16e WMAN adopts one with truncated exponentially extending sleep intervals denoted by PS-16, which contains constant sleep intervals as special cases. The two mechanisms are compared, resulting in the, finding that in the case of Poisson traffic, they have the same performance; whereas in the case of non-Poisson traffic PS-16 has better performance. For non-Poisson traffic, the performance of PS-16 lacks a closed form expression, which makes its design challenging. The authors propose to approximate the idle durations of an MS by hyper-exponentials, based on which an online sleep mode scheduling algorithm is developed. Numerical examples are provided to illustrate the efficiency of the proposed algorithm.     

Direction finding in IEEE802.11 wireless networks

A novel direction-finding method for stations of IEEE802.11 wireless local area networks is presented in this paper. The method uses a switched beam array for determining the direction of arrival of the incident electromagnetic field in a time efficient way and associates certain medium access control (MAC) layer functions with different radiation patterns of the switched antenna array, in order to determine the proper orientation of directional beams on both entities of a communication link. The application of the proposed method to an IEEE802.11 wireless network is presented and it is depicted how the method improves the network performance without requiring any modifications to the existing MAC protocol.     

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

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

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

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

Integrated quality-of-service differentiation over IEEE 802.11 wireless LANs

The fundamental medium access control mechanism in IEEE 802.11 wireless LANs (WLANs)-distributed coordination function (DCF) only supports the best-effort service and does not support quality-of-service (QoS) differentiation. Enhanced distributed channel access (EDCA) in IEEE 802.11e supports delay differentiation. A new approach, EDCA+ , is proposed to enhance QoS over WLANs. It simultaneously achieves bandwidth, delay and jitter differentiation by distinguishing the minimum contention window, the maximum backoff stage or persistent factor and packet-loss rate differentiation by distinguishing the retry limit. Analytical models are proposed to analyse the performance of EDCA+ in terms of throughput, bandwidth, delay, jitter and packet-loss rate. Extensive simulations are also carried out to evaluate the accuracy of the proposed performance models and to compare the performance of DCF, EDCA and EDCA+. The simulation results show that EDCA+ performs better than DCF and EDCA in ensuring integrated QoS, and that the proposed analytical models are valid.     

MAC-layer channel utilisation enhancements for wireless mesh networks

The authors focus on a wireless mesh network, that is, an ad hoc IEEE 802.11-based network whose nodes are either user devices or Access Points providing access to the mesh network or to the Internet. By relying on some work done within the IEEE 802.11s TG, the network nodes can use one control channel and one or more data channels, each on separate frequencies. Then, some problems related to channel access are identified and a MAC scheme is proposed that specifically addresses the problem of hidden terminals and the problem of coexisting control and data traffic on different frequency channels. An analytical model of the MAC scheme is presented and validated by using the Omnet++ simulator. Through the developed model, we show that our solution achieves very good performance both in regular and in very fragmented mesh topologies, and it significantly outperforms the standard 802.11 solution.     

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

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

IEEE 802.11b based ad hoc networking and its performance in mobile channels

It is widely believed that IEEE 802.11 standard is aimed mainly for fixed indoor wireless local area networks and is not suited for mobile applications, even though the IEEE 802.11b systems may work in either infrastructure mode or ad hoc mode. The impact of node mobility on ad hoc network performance has already been studied intensively, but these studies mostly do not consider temporal fluctuations of the mobile wireless channel due to the Doppler shift. An investigation of the mobility impact on the performance of IEEE 802.11b ad hoc systems with Rician/Rayleigh fading under different node velocities is presented. A comprehensive and in-depth analysis of the impacts of a multitude of different signal distortions on an IEEE 802.11b system performance is also presented. Specifically, the authors study the bit-error rate performances with respect to node velocities for different modulation schemes. The simulation results show that, owing to its extremely low implementation and deployment cost, the current IEEE 802.11b standard has its potential to be deployed in a mobile ad hoc environment if the line-of-sight path between transmitter and receiver exists.     

分簇无线传感器网络的双时槽混合MAC协议

基于事件驱动的无线传感器网络应用,提出了一个基于分簇优化的低时延混合MAC协议--CHMAC.CHMAC采用双时槽传输调度和载波检测多路接入/时分多址接入(CSMA/TDMA)混合模式,采用适合分簇网络的时槽分配,优先保证紧急事件的最小延迟发送,并充分利用分簇网络的数据流特点,精细控制节点的侦听、睡眠以及传输功率,以提高能量有效性和网络吞吐量.理论分析和模拟试验表明,该协议能够以良好的适应性和健壮性在各种流量条件下均表现良好的性能.     

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

Fair scheduling with rate control for IEEE 802.16 broadband wireless networks

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

Dual power-saving modes for voice over IP traffic supporting voice activity detection

In the context of the IEEE 802.16e standard, a dual power-saving mode (DPSM) algorithm for voice over IP (VoIP) traffic whose voice codec supports voice activity detection is proposed. The proposed algorithm utilises the inactivity of the voice codec of each conversing party during mutual silence periods. Using the suggested method, the length of the sleep intervals varies during mutual silence periods, while during talk-spurt periods it is fixed according the VoIP packet generation ratio. The performance of the proposed DPSM algorithm for the average packet-buffering delay in the base station (BS) and the energy consumption of a mobile station (MS) is evaluated numerically and validated with the aid of computer simulation. The results show that when the proposed combined method is used, the energy consumption of an MS is considerably less when a PSM that only uses sleep intervals of a fixed length is operating. This improvement in performance comes at the cost of greater packet-buffering delay in the BS.     

Differentiated cooperative multiple access for multimedia communications over fading wireless networks

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

Simulation-based performance analysis and improvement of orthogonal frequency division multiplexing - 802.11p system for vehicular communications

In this study, the physical layer (PHY) of the upcoming vehicular communication standard IEEE 802.11p has been simulated in vehicle-to-vehicle situation through two different scenarios. IEEE 802.11p wireless access in vehicular environment defines modifications to IEEE 802.11 to support intelligent transportation systems applications. The standard is being considered as a promising wireless technology for enhancing transportation safety and provides safety-related services like collision avoidance and emergency breaking. At first, this includes data exchange between high-speed vehicles and between the vehicles and the roadside infrastructure in the licensed ITS band of 5.9 GHz. Performance analysis of PHY model has been evaluated into different propagation conditions (AWGN, Ricean and Rayleigh fading). In particular, bit error rate (BER) and signal to noise ratio for all the data rates have been estimated. Simulation results reveal that our system can efficiently mitigate inter-symbol interference and inter-carrier interference introduced by multi-path delay spread in our high mobility environment but against frequency-selective fading BER values are on to increase. To overcome this problem, the authors propose to use a different value of guard interval (3.2 μs). Our initial results indicate that the performance with the larger cyclic prefix outperforms the performance of the initial value in our mobile channel profiles. Moreover, the authors investigated in which way the Doppler spread affects the performance with regard to the transmission distance.     

Performance measurement of IEEE 802.11b-based networks affected by narrowband interference through cross-layer measurements

Researches and development efforts in wireless networking and systems are progressing at an incredible rate. Among them, measurement and analysis of performance achieved at network layer and perceived by end users is an important task. In particular, recent advances concerning IEEE 802.11b-based networks seem to be focused on the measurement of key parameters at different protocol levels in a cross-layered fashion, because of their inherent vulnerability to in-channel interference. By adopting a cross-layer approach on a real network set-up operating in a suitable experimental testbed, packet loss against signal-to-interference ratio in IEEE 802.11b-based networks is hereinafter assessed. Results of several measurements aimed at establishing the sensitivity of IEEE 802.11b carrier sensing mechanisms to continuous interfering signals and evaluating the effects of triggered interference on packet transmission.     

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

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