9 research outputs found
Future Evolution of CSMA Protocols for the IEEE 802.11 Standard
In this paper a candidate protocol to replace the prevalent CSMA/CA medium
access control in Wireless Local Area Networks is presented. The proposed
protocol can achieve higher throughput than CSMA/CA, while maintaining
fairness, and without additional implementation complexity. Under certain
circumstances, it is able to reach and maintain collision-free operation, even
when the number of contenders is variable and potentially large. It is backward
compatible, allowing for new and legacy stations to coexist without degrading
one another's performance, a property that can make the adoption process by
future versions of the standard smooth and inexpensive.Comment: This paper has been accepted in the Second IEEE ICC Workshop 2013 on
Telecommunication Standards: From Research to Standard
Towards a Collision-Free WLAN: Dynamic Parameter Adjustment in CSMA/E2CA
Carrier Sense Multiple Access with Enhanced Collision Avoidance (CSMA/ECA) is
a distributed MAC protocol that allows collision-free access to the medium in
WLAN. The only difference between CSMA/ECA and the well-known CSMA/CA is that
the former uses a deterministic backoff after successful transmissions.
Collision-free operation is reached after a transient state during which some
collisions may occur. This article shows that the duration of the transient
state can be shortened by appropriately setting the contention parameters.
Standard absorbing Markov Chain theory can be used to describe the behaviour of
the system in the transient state and to predict the expected number of slots
to reach the collision-free operation.
The article also introduces CSMA/E2CA, in which a deterministic backoff is
used two consecutive times after a successful transmission. CSMA/E2CA converges
quicker to collision-free operation and delivers higher performance than
CSMA/CA in harsh wireless scenarios with high frame error rates.
To achieve collision-free operations when the number of contenders is large,
it may be necessary to dynamically adjust the contention parameter. The last
part of the article suggests an approach for such parameter adjustment which is
validated by simulation results
Throughput Analysis of Primary and Secondary Networks in a Shared IEEE 802.11 System
In this paper, we analyze the coexistence of a primary and a secondary
(cognitive) network when both networks use the IEEE 802.11 based distributed
coordination function for medium access control. Specifically, we consider the
problem of channel capture by a secondary network that uses spectrum sensing to
determine the availability of the channel, and its impact on the primary
throughput. We integrate the notion of transmission slots in Bianchi's Markov
model with the physical time slots, to derive the transmission probability of
the secondary network as a function of its scan duration. This is used to
obtain analytical expressions for the throughput achievable by the primary and
secondary networks. Our analysis considers both saturated and unsaturated
networks. By performing a numerical search, the secondary network parameters
are selected to maximize its throughput for a given level of protection of the
primary network throughput. The theoretical expressions are validated using
extensive simulations carried out in the Network Simulator 2. Our results
provide critical insights into the performance and robustness of different
schemes for medium access by the secondary network. In particular, we find that
the channel captures by the secondary network does not significantly impact the
primary throughput, and that simply increasing the secondary contention window
size is only marginally inferior to silent-period based methods in terms of its
throughput performance.Comment: To appear in IEEE Transactions on Wireless Communication
Dynamic tuning of the IEEE 802.11 distributed coordination function to derive a theoretical throughput limit
IEEE 802.11 is the most popular and widely used standard for wireless local area network communication. It has attracted countless numbers of studies devoted to improving the performance of the standard in many ways. In this article, we performed theoretical analyses for providing a solution to the maximum throughput problem for the IEEE 802.11 distributed coordination function, and an algorithm using a binary cubic equation for obtaining a much closer approximation of the optimal solution than previous algorithms. Moreover, by studying and analyzing the characteristics of the proposed algorithm, we found that the effects of backoff counter consecutive freeze process could be neglected or even disregarded. Using the NS2 network simulator, we not only showed that the proposed theoretical analysis complied with the simulated results, but also verified that the proposed approach outperformed others in achieving a much closer approximation to the optimal solution
Towards reliable geographic broadcasting in vehicular networks
In Vehicular ad hoc Networks (VANETs), safety-related messages are broadcasted amongst cars, helping to improve drivers' awareness of the road situation. VANETs’ reliability are highly affected by channel contention. This thesis first addresses the issue of channel use efficiency in geographical broadcasts (geocasts). Constant connectivity changes inside a VANET make the existing routing algorithms unsuitable. This thesis presents a geocast algorithm that uses a metric to estimate the ratio of useful to useless packet received. Simulations showed that this algorithm is more channel-efficient than the farthest-first strategy. It also exposes a parameter, allowing it to adapt to channel load. Second, this thesis presents a method of estimating channel load for providing feedback to moderate the offered load. A theoretical model showing the relationship between channel load and the idle time between transmissions is presented and used to estimate channel contention. Unsaturated stations on the network were shown to have small but observable effects on this relationship. In simulations, channel estimators based on this model show higher accuracy and faster convergence time than by observing packet collisions. These estimators are also less affected by unsaturated stations than by observing packet collisions. Third, this thesis couples the channel estimator to the geocast algorithm, producing a closed-loop load-reactive system that allows geocasts to adapt to instantaneous channel conditions. Simulations showed that this system is not only shown to be more efficient in channel use and be able to adapt to channel contention, but is also able to self-correct suboptimal retransmission decisions. Finally, this thesis demonstrates that all tested network simulators exhibit unexpected behaviours when simulating broadcasts. This thesis describes in depth the error in ns-3, leading to a set of workarounds that allows results from most versions of ns-3 to be interpreted correctly