An admission control scheme for IEEE 802.11e wireless local area networks

Includes bibliographical references (leaves 80-84).Recent times has seen a tremendous increase in the deployment and use of 802.11 Wireless Local Area Networks (WLANs). These networks are easy to deploy and maintain, while providing reasonably high data rates at a low cost. In the paradigm of Next-Generation-Networks (NGNs), WLANs can be seen as an important access network technology to support IP multimedia services. However a traditional WLAN does not provide Quality of Service (QoS) support since it was originally designed for best effort operation. The IEEE 802. 11e standard was introduced to overcome the lack of QoS support for the legacy IEEE 802 .11 WLANs. It enhances the Media Access Control (MAC) layer operations to incorporate service differentiation. However, there is a need to prevent overloading of wireless channels, since the QoS experienced by traffic flows is degraded with heavily loaded channels. An admission control scheme for IEEE 802.11e WLANs would be the best solution to limit the amount of multimedia traffic so that channel overloading can be prevented. Some of the work in the literature proposes admission control solutions to protect the QoS of real-time traffic for IEEE 802.11e Enhanced Distributed Channel Access (EDCA). However, these solutions often under-utilize the resources of the wireless channels. A measurement-aided model-based admission control scheme for IEEE 802.11e EDCA WLANs is proposed to provide reasonable bandwidth guarantees to all existing flows. The admission control scheme makes use of bandwidth estimations that allows the bandwidth guarantees of all the flows that are admitted into the network to be protected. The bandwidth estimations are obtained using a developed analytical model of IEEE 802.11e EDCA channels. The admission control scheme also aims to accept the maximum amount of flows that can be accommodated by the network's resources. Through simulations, the performance of the proposed admission control scheme is evaluated using NS-2. Results show that accurate bandwidth estimations can be obtained when comparing the estimated achievable bandwidth to actual simulated bandwidth. The results also validate that the bandwidth needs of all admitted traffic are always satisfied when the admission control scheme is applied. It was also found that the admission control scheme allows the maximum amount of flows to be admitted into the network, according the network's capacity

Throughput Analysis Model for IEEE 802.11e EDCA with Multiple Access Categories

IEEE 802.11e standard has been specified to support differentiated quality of service (QoS), one of the critical issues on the conventional IEEE 802.11 wireless local area networks (WLANs). Enhanced Distributed Channel Access (EDCA) is the fundamental and mandatory contention-based channel access method of IEEE 802.11e, and delivers traffic based on differentiated Access Categories (ACs). A general three dimensional Markov chain model of IEEE 802.11e EDCA for performance analysis is proposed in this paper. The analytical model considers multiple stations with an arbitrary number of different ACs. It also differentiates the contention window (CW) sizes and the arbitration interframe spaces (AIFSs), and considers virtual collision mechanism. Based on the model, the saturation throughput of EDCA is derived, and the accuracy of the proposed model is validated via simulations

Analysis and improvement of medium access control protocols in wireless networks. Performance modelling and Quality-of-Service enhancement of IEEE 802.11e MAC in wireless local area networks under heterogeneous multimedia traffic.

In order to efficiently utilize the scarce wireless resource as well as keep up with the ever-increasing demand for Quality-of-Service (QoS) of multimedia applications, wireless networks are undergoing rapid development and dramatic changes in the underlying technologies and protocols. The Medium Access Control (MAC) protocol, which coordinates the channel access and data transmission of wireless stations, plays a pivotal role in wireless networks. Performance modelling and analysis has been and continues to be of great theoretical and practical importance in the design and development of wireless networks. This research is devoted to developing efficient and cost-effective analytical tools for the performance analysis and enhancement of MAC protocols in Wireless Local Area Networks (WLANs) under heterogeneous multimedia traffic. To support the MAC-layer QoS in WLANs, the IEEE 802.11e Enhanced Distributed Channel Access (EDCA) protocol has proposed three QoS differentiation schemes in terms of Arbitrary Inter-Frame Space (AIFS), Contention Window (CW), and Transmission Opportunity (TXOP). This research starts with the development of new analytical models for the TXOP scheme specified in the EDCA protocol under Poisson traffic. A dynamic TXOP scheme is then proposed to adjust the TXOP limits according to the status of the transmission queue. Theoretical analysis and simulation experiments show that the proposed dynamic scheme largely improves the performance of TXOP. To evaluate the TXOP scheme in the presence of ii heterogeneous traffic, a versatile analytical model is developed to capture the traffic heterogeneity and model the features of burst transmission. The performance results highlight the importance of taking into account the heterogeneous traffic for the accurate evaluation of the TXOP scheme in wireless multimedia networks. To obtain a thorough and deep understanding of the performance attributes of the EDCA protocol, a comprehensive analytical model is then proposed to accommodate the integration of the three QoS schemes of EDCA in terms of AIFS, CW, and TXOP under Poisson traffic. The performance results show that the TXOP scheme can not only support service differentiation but also improve the network performance, whereas the AIFS and CW schemes provide QoS differentiation only. Moreover, the results demonstrate that the MAC buffer size has considerable impact on the QoS performance of EDCA under Poisson traffic. To investigate the performance of EDCA in wireless multimedia networks, an analytical model is further developed for EDCA under heterogeneous traffic. The performance results demonstrate the significant effects of heterogeneous traffic on the total delay and frame losses of EDCA with different buffer sizes. Finally, an efficient admission control scheme is presented for the IEEE 802.11e WLANs based on analytical modelling and a game-theoretical approach. The admission control scheme can maintain the system operation at an optimal point where the utility of the Access Point (AP) is maximized with the QoS constraints of various users

A differentiated Services Architecture for Quality of Service Provisioning in Wireless Local Area Networks

Currently the issue of Quality of Service (QoS) is a major problem in IP networks due to the growth in multimedia traffic (e.g. voice and video applications) and therefore many mechanisms like IntServ, DiffServ, etc. have been proposed. Since the IEEE 802.11b (or Wi-Fi) standard was approved in 1999, it has gained in popularity to become the leading Wireless Local Area Network (WLAN) technology with millions of such networks deployed worldwide. Wireless networks have a limited capacity (11 Mbits/s in the case of Wi-Fi networks) owing to the limited amount of frequency spectrum available. At any given time there may be a large number of users contending for access which results in the bandwidth available to each user being severely limited. Moreover, the system does not differentiate between traffic types which means that all traffic, regardless of its importance or priority, experiences the same QoS. An important network application requiring QoS guarantees is the provision of time-bounded services, such as voice over IP and video streaming, where the combination of packet delay, jitter and packet loss will impact on the perceived QoS. Consequently this has led to a large amount of research work focussing mainly on QoS enhancement schemes for the 802.11 MAC mechanism. The Task Group E of the IEEE 802.11 working group has been developing an extension to the Wi-Fi standard that proposes to make changes to the MAC mechanism to support applications with QoS requirements. The 802.11e QoS standard is currently undergoing final revisions before approval expected sometime in 2004. As 802.11e WLAN equipment is not yet available, performance reports can only be based on simulation. The objective of this thesis was to develop a computer simulator that implements the upcoming IEEE 802.11e standard and to use this simulator to evaluate the QoS performance enhancement potential of 802.11e. This thesis discusses the QoS facilities, analyses the MAC protocol enhancements and compares them with the original 802.11 standard. The issue of QoS provisioning is primarily concerned with providing predictable performance guarantees with regard to throughput, packet delay, jitter and packet loss. The simulated results indicate that the proposed QoS enhancements to the MAC will considerably improve QoS performance in 802.11b WLANs. However, in order for the proposed 802.11e QoS mechanism to be effective the 802.11e parameters will need to be continually adjusted in order to ensure QoS guarantees are fulfilled for all traffic loads

Advanced Wireless LAN

The past two decades have witnessed starling advances in wireless LAN technologies that were stimulated by its increasing popularity in the home due to ease of installation, and in commercial complexes offering wireless access to their customers. This book presents some of the latest development status of wireless LAN, covering the topics on physical layer, MAC layer, QoS and systems. It provides an opportunity for both practitioners and researchers to explore the problems that arise in the rapidly developed technologies in wireless LAN

Design and optimization of QoS-based medium access control protocols for next-generation wireless LANs

This thesis was submitted for the degree of Doctor of Philosophy and awarded by Brunel University.In recent years, there have been tremendous advances in wireless & mobile communications, including wireless radio techniques, networking protocols, and mobile devices. It is expected that different broadband wireless access technologies, e.g., WiFi (IEEE 802.11) and WiMAX (IEEE 802.16) will coexist in the future. In the meantime, multimedia applications have experienced an explosive growth with increasing user demands. Nowadays, people expect to receive high-speed video, audio, voice and web services even when being mobile. The key question that needs to be answered, then, is how do we ensure that users always have the "best" network performance with the "lowest" costs in such complicated situations? The latest IEEE 802.11n standards attains rates of more than 100 Mbps by introducing innovative enhancements at the PHY and MAC layer, e.g. MIMO and Frame Aggregation, respectively. However, in this thesis we demonstrate that frame aggregation's performance adheres due to the EDCA scheduler's priority mechanism and consequently resulting in the network's poor overall performance. Short waiting times for high priority flows into the aggregation queue resolves to poor channel utilization. A Delayed Channel Access algorithm was designed to intentionally postpone the channel access procedure so that the number of packets in a formed frame can be increased and so will the network's overall performance. However, in some cases, the DCA algorithm has a negative impact on the applications that utilize the TCP protocol, especially the when small TCP window sizes are engaged. So, the TCP process starts to refrain from sending data due to delayed acknowledgements and the overall throughput drops. In this thesis, we address the above issues by firstly demonstrating the potential performance benefits of frame aggregation over the next generation wireless networks. The efficiency and behaviour of frame aggregation within a single queue, are mathematically analysed with the aid of a M=G[a;b]=1=K model. Results show that a trade-off choice has to be taken into account over minimizing the waiting time or maximizing utilization. We also point out that there isn't an optimum batch collection rule which can be assumed as generally valid but individual cases have to be considered separately. Secondly, we demonstrate through extensive simulations that by introducing a method, the DCA algorithm, which dynamically determines and adapts batch collections based upon the traffic's characteristics, QoS requirements and server's maximum capacity, also improves e ciency. Thirdly, it is important to understand the behaviour of the TCP ows over the WLAN and the influence that DCA has over the degrading performance of the TCP protocol. We investigate the cause of the problem and provide the foundations of designing and implementing possible solutions. Fourthly, we introduce two innovative proposals, one amendment and one extension to the original DCA algorithm, called Adaptive DCA and Selective DCA, respectively. Both solutions have been implemented in OPNET and extensive simulation runs over a wide set of scenarios show their effectiveness over the network's overall performance, each in its own way.This study was supported by the Engineering and Physical Sciences Research Council (EPSRC)

Efficient real-time video delivery in vehicular networks

Tesis por compendio[EN] Vehicular Ad-hoc Networks (VANET) are a special type of networks where the nodes involved in the communication are vehicles. VANETs are created when several vehicles connect among themselves without the use of any infrastructure. In certain situations the absence of infrastructure is an advantage, but it also creates several challenges that should be overcome. One of the main problems related with the absence of infrastructure is the lack of a coordinator that can ensure a certain level of quality in order to enable the correct transmission of video and audio. Video transmission can be extremely useful in this type of networks as it can be used for videoconferencing of by traffic authorities to monitor the scene of an accident. In this thesis we focused on real time video transmission, providing solutions for both unicast and multicast environments. Specifically, we built a real-world testbed scenario and made a comparison with simulation results to validate the behavior of the simulation models. Using that testbed we implemented and improved DACME, an admission control module able to provide Quality of Service (QoS) to unicast video transmissions. DACME proved to be a valid solution to obtain a certain level of QoS in multi-hop environments. Concerning multicast video transmission, we developed and simulated several flooding schemes, focusing specifically on VANET environments. In this scope, the main contribution of this thesis is the Automatic Copies Distance Based (ACDB) flooding scheme. Thanks to the use of the perceived vehicular density, ACDB is a zeroconf scheme able to achieve good video quality in both urban and highway environments, being specially effective in highway environments.[ES] Las redes vehiculares ad-hoc (VANET) son un tipo especial de redes en las que los nodos que participan de la comunicación son vehículos. Las VANETs se crean cuando diversos vehículos se conectan entre ellos sin el uso de ninguna infraestructura. En determinadas situaciones, la ausencia de infraestructura es una ventaja, pero también crea una gran cantidad de desafíos que se deben superar. Uno de los principales problemas relacionados con la ausencia de infraestructura, es la ausencia de un coordinador que pueda asegurar un determinado nivel de calidad, para poder asegurar la correcta transmisión de audio y vídeo. La transmisión de vídeo puede ser de extrema utilidad en este tipo de redes ya que puede ser empleada para videoconferencias o por las autoridades de tráfico para monitorizar el estado de un accidente. En esta tesis nos centramos en la transmisión de vídeo en tiempo real, proveyendo soluciones tanto para entornos unicast como multicast. En particular construimos un banco de pruebas real y comparamos los resultados obtenidos con resultados obtenidos en un entorno simulado para comprobar la fiabilidad de estos modelos. Usando el mismo banco de pruebas, implementamos y mejoramos DACME, un módulo de control de admisión capaz de proveer de calidad de servicio a transmisiones de vídeo unicast. DACME probó ser una solución válida para obtener ciertos niveles de calidad de servicio en entornos multisalto. En lo referente a la transmisión de vídeo multicast, desarrollamos y simulamos diversos esquemas de difusión diseñados específicamente para entornos VANET. En este campo, la principal contribución de esta tesis es el esquema de difusión "Automatic Copies Distance Based" (ACDB). Gracias al uso de la densidad vehicular percibida, ACDB es un esquema, que sin necesidad de configuración, permite alcanzar una buena calidad de vídeo tanto en entornos urbanos como en autopistas, siendo especialmente efectivo en este último entorno.[CA] Les xarxes vehiculars ad-hoc (VANET) son un tipus de xarxes especials a les que els diferents nodes que formen part d'una comunicació son vehicles. Les VANETs es formen quan diversos vehicles es connecten sense fer ús de cap infraestructura. A certes situacions l'absència d'una infraestructura suposa un avantatge, encara que també genera una gran quantitat de desafiaments que s'han de superar. U dels principals problemes relacionats amb l'absència d'infraestructura, és la manca d'un coordinador que puga garantir una correcta transmissió tant de video com d'àudio. La transmissió de video pot ser d'extrema utilitat a aquest tipus de xarxes, ja que es por emprar tant per a videoconferències com per part de les autoritats de trànsit per monitoritzar l'estat d'un accident. A aquesta tesi ens centrem en transmissió de video en temps real, proporcionant solucions tant a entorns unicast como a entorns multicast. Particularment, vam construir un banc de proves i obtinguérem resultats que comparàrem amb resultats obtinguts mitjançant simulació. D'aquesta manera validarem la fiabilitat dels resultats simulats. Fent ús del mateix banc de proves, vàrem implementar i millorar DACME, un mòdul de control d'admissió, capaç de proveir de qualitat de servici a transmissions de video unicast. DACME va provar ser una bona solució per obtindré un bon nivell de qualitat de servici en entorns de xarxes ad-hoc amb diversos salts. Si ens centrem a la transmissió de video multicast, vàrem implementar i simular diferents esquemes de difusió, específicament dissenyats per al seu ús a entorns VANET. La principal contribució d'aquesta tesi es l'esquema de difusió ACDB (Automatic Copies Distance Based). Fent ús de la densitat vehicular, ACDB es capaç d'obtindre una bona qualitat de video tant a ciutats com a vies interurbanes, sent a especialment efectiu a aquestes últimes. A més a més no es necessària cap configuració per part de l'usuari.Torres Cortés, Á. (2016). Efficient real-time video delivery in vehicular networks [Tesis doctoral no publicada]. Universitat Politècnica de València. https://doi.org/10.4995/Thesis/10251/62685TESISCompendi