Dynamic MAC Parameters Configuration for Performance Optimization in 802.11e Networks

Quality of service support in wireless LAN is a theme of current interest. Several solutions have been proposed in literature in order to protect time-sensitive traffic from best-effort traffic. According to the EDCA proposal, which is a completely distributed solution, the service differentiation is provided by giving probabilistically higher number of channel accesses to stations involved in real-time applications. To this purpose, the MAC parameter settings of each contending stations can be tuned dynamically. In this paper, we face the problem of tuning the EDCA MAC parameters in common scenarios in which a given number of low-rate delay-sensitive traffic flows share the channel with some stations involved in data transfer. Our contribution is threefold. First, we show that, whenever possible, the delay constraints of the high priority class can be satisfied in both the cases of contention windows differentiation and inter-frame space differentiation. However, these mechanisms have different side effects in terms of bandwidth availability for the best effort stations. Second, we propose to exploit the MAC parameter dynamic settings of EDCA in order to probabilistically guarantee the delay requirements and to jointly maximize the aggregated throughput of the network. Finally, we suggest a very simple solution to automate these parameter settings in a real scenario, where traffic flows can be activated/deactivated dynamically, by simply monitoring the channel activity. The proposed solution is very robust, since it does not require any a priori traffic model or any network load estimator

Towards End-to-End QoS in Ad Hoc Networks

http://citi.insa-lyon.fr/wons2006/index.htmlIn this paper, we address the problem of supporting adaptive QoS resource management in mobile ad hoc networks, by proposing an efficient model for providing proportional endto- end QoS between classes. The effectiveness of our proposed solution in meeting desired QoS differentiation at a specific node and from end-to-end are assessed by simulation using a queueing network model implemented in QNAP. The experiments results show that the proposed solution provides consistent proportional differentiation for any service class and validates our claim even under bursty traffic and fading channel conditions

A Dynamic Multimedia User-Weight Classification Scheme for IEEE_802.11 WLANs

In this paper we expose a dynamic traffic-classification scheme to support multimedia applications such as voice and broadband video transmissions over IEEE 802.11 Wireless Local Area Networks (WLANs). Obviously, over a Wi-Fi link and to better serve these applications - which normally have strict bounded transmission delay or minimum link rate requirement - a service differentiation technique can be applied to the media traffic transmitted by the same mobile node using the well-known 802.11e Enhanced Distributed Channel Access (EDCA) protocol. However, the given EDCA mode does not offer user differentiation, which can be viewed as a deficiency in multi-access wireless networks. Accordingly, we propose a new inter-node priority access scheme for IEEE 802.11e networks which is compatible with the EDCA scheme. The proposed scheme joins a dynamic user-weight to each mobile station depending on its outgoing data, and therefore deploys inter-node priority for the channel access to complement the existing EDCA inter-frame priority. This provides efficient quality of service control across multiple users within the same coverage area of an access point. We provide performance evaluations to compare the proposed access model with the basic EDCA 802.11 MAC protocol mode to elucidate the quality improvement achieved for multimedia communication over 802.11 WLANs.Comment: 15 pages, 8 figures, 3 tables, International Journal of Computer Networks & Communications (IJCNC

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

Control-theoretic approaches for efficient transmission on IEEE 802.11e wireless networks

With the increasing use of multimedia applications on the wireless network, the functionalities of the IEEE 802.11 WLAN was extended to allow traffic differentiation so that priority traffic gets quicker service time depending on their Quality of Service (QoS) requirements. The extended functionalities contained in the IEEE Medium Access Control (MAC) and Physical Layer (PHY) Specifications, i.e. the IEEE 802.11e specifications, are recommended values for channel access parameters along traffic lines and the channel access parameters are: the Minimum Contention Window CWmin, Maximum Contention Window CWmax, Arbitration inter-frame space number, (AIFSN) and the Transmission Opportunity (TXOP). These default Enhanced Distributed Channel Access (EDCA) contention values used by each traffic type in accessing the wireless medium are only recommended values which could be adjusted or changed based on the condition of number of associated nodes on the network. In particular, we focus on the Contention Window (CW) parameter and it has been shown that when the number of nodes on the network is small, a smaller value of CWmin should be used for channel access in order to avoid underutilization of channel time and when the number of associated nodes is large, a larger value of CWmin should be used in order to avoid large collisions and retransmissions on the network. Fortunately, allowance was made for these default values to be adjusted or changed but the challenge has been in designing an algorithm that constantly and automatically tunes the CWmin value so that the Access Point (AP) gives out the right CWmin value to be used on the WLAN and this value should be derived based on the level of activity experienced on the network or predefined QoS constraints while considering the dynamic nature of the WLAN. In this thesis, we propose the use of feedback based control and we design a controller for wireless medium access. The controller will give an output which will be the EDCA CWmin value to be used by contending stations/nodes in accessing the medium and this value will be based on current WLAN conditions. We propose the use of feedback control due to its established mathematical concepts particularly for single-input-single-output systems and multi-variable systems which are scenarios that apply to the WLAN