2,864 research outputs found
Nap: Practical Micro-Sleeps for 802.11 WLANs
In this paper, we revisit the idea of putting interfaces to sleep during
'packet overhearing' (i.e., when there are ongoing transmissions addressed to
other stations) from a practical standpoint. To this aim, we perform a robust
experimental characterisation of the timing and consumption behaviour of a
commercial 802.11 card. We design Nap, a local standard-compliant
energy-saving mechanism that leverages micro-sleep opportunities inherent to
the CSMA operation of 802.11 WLANs. This mechanism is backwards compatible and
incrementally deployable, and takes into account the timing limitations of
existing hardware, as well as practical CSMA-related issues (e.g., capture
effect). According to the performance assessment carried out through
trace-based simulation, the use of our scheme would result in a 57% reduction
in the time spent in overhearing, thus leading to an energy saving of 15.8% of
the activity time.Comment: 15 pages, 12 figure
Capacity Analysis of IEEE 802.11ah WLANs for M2M Communications
Focusing on the increasing market of the sensors and actuators networks, the
IEEE 802.11ah Task Group is currently working on the standardization of a new
amendment. This new amendment will operate at the sub-1GHz band, ensure
transmission ranges up to 1 Km, data rates above 100 kbps and very low power
operation. With IEEE 802.11ah, the WLANs will offer a solution for applications
such as smart metering, plan automation, eHealth or surveillance. Moreover,
thanks to a hierarchical signalling, the IEEE 802.11ah will be able to manage a
higher number of stations (STAs) and improve the 802.11 Power Saving
Mechanisms. In order to support a high number of STAs, two different signalling
modes are proposed, TIM and Non-TIM Offset. In this paper we present a
theoretical model to predict the maximum number of STAs supported by both modes
depending on the traffic load and the data rate used. Moreover, the IEEE
802.11ah performance and energy consumption for both signalling modes and for
different traffic patterns and data rates is evaluated. Results show that both
modes achieve similar Packet Delivery Ratio values but the energy consumed with
the TIM Offset is, in average, a 11.7% lower.Comment: Multiple Access Communications 201
Spectrum Utilization and Congestion of IEEE 802.11 Networks in the 2.4 GHz ISM Band
Wi-Fi technology, plays a major role in society thanks to its widespread availability, ease of use and low cost. To assure its long term viability in terms of capacity and ability to share the spectrum efficiently, it is of paramount to study the spectrum utilization and congestion mechanisms in live environments. In this paper the service level in the 2.4 GHz ISM band is investigated with focus on todays IEEE 802.11 WLAN systems with support for the 802.11e extension. Here service level means the overall Quality of Service (QoS), i.e. can all devices fulfill their communication needs? A crosslayer approach is used, since the service level can be measured at several levels of the protocol stack. The focus is on monitoring at both the Physical (PHY) and the Medium Access Control (MAC) link layer simultaneously by performing respectively power measurements with a spectrum analyzer to assess spectrum utilization and packet sniffing to measure the congestion. Compared to traditional QoS analysis in 802.11 networks, packet sniffing allows to study the occurring congestion mechanisms more thoroughly. The monitoring is applied for the following two cases. First the influence of interference between WLAN networks sharing the same radio channel is investigated in a controlled environment. It turns out that retry rate, Clear-ToSend (CTS), Request-To-Send (RTS) and (Block) Acknowledgment (ACK) frames can be used to identify congestion, whereas the spectrum analyzer is employed to identify the source of interference. Secondly, live measurements are performed at three locations to identify this type of interference in real-live situations. Results show inefficient use of the wireless medium in certain scenarios, due to a large portion of management and control frames compared to data content frames (i.e. only 21% of the frames is identified as data frames)
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