Throughput optimization strategies for large-scale wireless LANs

Thanks to the active development of IEEE 802.11, the performance of wireless local area networks (WLANs) is improving by every new edition of the standard facilitating large enterprises to rely on Wi-Fi for more demanding applications. The limited number of channels in the unlicensed industrial scientific medical frequency band however is one of the key bottlenecks of Wi-Fi when scalability and robustness are points of concern. In this paper we propose two strategies for the optimization of throughput in wireless LANs: a heuristic derived from a theoretical model and a surrogate model based decision engine

New algorithm for distributed frequency assignments in IEEE 802.11

The continuous growth of IEEE 802.11 wireless local area networks (WLAN) brings the benefit of a high speed wireless access to packet networks, such as Internet. But it also entails the successive appearance of new unresolved problems. One of these problems consists in the degradation of the performance observed by the users when there is a great number of radio networks coexisting in the same area. In densely populated zones it is not strange to find WLANs of different nature (private, public, etc.) sharing a scarce resource as it is the radio spectrum. This problem can be mitigated with an appropriate channel allocation. In this paper we present an algorithm for the frequency assignment problem (FAP) in IEEE 802.11, based on classical graph colouring but adding the objective of reducing interferences among overlapping cells, and thus improving the global throughput performance. An accurate evaluation of interferences is obtained not only measuring power levels, but also being aware of traffic load. Important performance improvements have been observed on a real scenario

A Game Theory based Contention Window Adjustment for IEEE 802.11 under Heavy Load

The 802.11 families are considered as the most applicable set of standards for Wireless Local Area Networks (WLANs) where nodes make access to the wireless media using random access techniques. In such networks, each node adjusts its contention window to the minimum size irrespective of the number of competing nodes, so in saturated mode and excessive number of nodes available, the network performance is reduced due to severe collision probability. A cooperative game is being proposed to adjust the users’ contention windows in improving the network throughput, delay and packet drop ratio under heavy traffic load circumstances. The system’s performance evaluated by simulations indicate some superiorities of the proposed method over 802.11-DCF (Distribute Coordinate Function)

On the Performance of Packet Aggregation in IEEE 802.11ac MU-MIMO WLANs

Multi-user spatial multiplexing combined with packet aggregation can significantly increase the performance of Wireless Local Area Networks (WLANs). In this letter, we present and evaluate a simple technique to perform packet aggregation in IEEE 802.11ac MU-MIMO (Multi-user Multiple Input Multiple Output) WLANs. Results show that in non-saturation conditions both the number of active stations (STAs) and the queue size have a significant impact on the system performance. If the number of stations is excessively high, the heterogeneity of destinations in the packets contained in the queue makes it difficult to take full advantage of packet aggregation. This effect can be alleviated by increasing the queue size, which increases the chances to schedule a large number of packets at each transmission, hence improving the system throughput at the cost of a higher delay

Dynamic Queue Utilization Based MAC for multi-hop Ad Hoc networks

The end-to-end throughput in single flow multi-hop Ad Hoc networks decays rapidly with path length. Along the path, the success rate of delivering packets towards the destination decreases due to higher contention, interference, limited buffer size and limited shared bandwidth constraints. In such environments the queues fill up faster in nodes closer to the source than in the nodes nearer the destination. In order to reduce buffer overflow and improve throughput for a saturated network, this paper introduces a new MAC protocol named Dynamic Queue Utilization Based Medium Access Control (DQUB-MAC). The protocol aims to prioritise access to the channel for queues with higher utilization and helps in achieving higher throughput by rapidly draining packets towards the destination. The proposed MAC enhances the performance of an end-to-end data flow by up to 30% for a six hop transmission in a chain topology and is demonstrated to remain competitive for other network topologies and for a variety of packet sizes

Performance improvements to the 802.11 wireless network medium access control sub-layer : a thesis presented in partial fulfilment of the requirements for the degree of Master of Engineering in Computer Systems Engineering at Massey University

This thesis presents the outcome into the research and development of improvements to the 802.11 wireless networking medium access control (MAC) sublayer. The main products of the research are three types of improvement that increase the efficiency and throughput of the 802.11 protocol. Beginning with an overview of the original 802.11 physical layer and MAC sub-layer standard, the introductory chapters then cover the many supplements to the original standard (including a brief on the future 802.11n supplement). The current state of the 802.11 MAC sub-layer is presented along with an assessment of the realistic performance available from 802.11. Lastly, the motivations for improving the MAC sub-layer are explained along with a summary of existing research into this area. The main improvement presented within the thesis is that of packet aggregation. The operation of aggregation is explained in detail, along with the reasons for the significant available throughput increase to 802.11 from aggregation. Aggregation is then developed to produce even higher throughput, and to be a more robust mechanism. Additionally, aggregation is formally described in the form of an update to the existing 802.11 standard. Following this, two more improvements are shown that can be used either with or without the aggregation mechanism. Stored frame headers are designed to reduce repetition of control data, and combined acknowledgements are an expansion of the block acknowledgement system introduced in the 802.11e supplement. This is followed by a description of the simulation environment used to test the three improvements presented, such as the settings used and metrics created. The results of the simulations of the improvements are presented along with the discussion. The developments to the basic improvements are also simulated and discussed in the same way. Finally, conclusions about the improvements detailed and the results shown in the simulations are drawn. Also at the end of the thesis, the possible future direction of research into the improvements is given, as well as the aspects and issues of implementing aggregation on a personal computer based platform

Energy efficiency in heterogeneous wireless access networks

In this article, we bring forward the important aspect of energy savings in wireless access networks. We specifically focus on the energy saving opportunities in the recently evolving heterogeneous networks (HetNets), both Single- RAT and Multi-RAT. Issues such as sleep/wakeup cycles and interference management are discussed for co-channel Single-RAT HetNets. In addition to that, a simulation based study for LTE macro-femto HetNets is presented, indicating the need for dynamic energy efficient resource management schemes. Multi-RAT HetNets also come with challenges such as network integration, combined resource management and network selection. Along with a discussion on these challenges, we also investigate the performance of the conventional WLAN-first network selection mechanism in terms of energy efficiency (EE) and suggest that EE can be improved by the application of intelligent call admission control policies