Improving multiple broadcasting of multimedia traffic in wireless ad-hoc networks

The increasing use of multimedia streaming applications in addition with advent of internet television and radio, demands from today's wireless networks to handle with reliability multiple broadcasting and multicasting sources. However, the way that 802.11 standard, which is the primary technology in wireless networking, handle this type of traffic raises a series of problems mainly related to the lack of an effective feedback mechanism. This lack in turn, limits the capability of random backoff process to eliminate collisions and reduce reliability and fairness. This inherited drawback of the standard is affecting the way broadcast and multicast traffic is transmitted as well as the overall performance of the network. In this paper initially we are highlighting the drawback of the IEEE 802.11 MAC algorithm in handling multiple stations “media type” data broadcasting in an ad-hoc wireless network. Then, we propose two different approaches in alleviating these problems. The first approach is the simple linear increase of the contention window (CW) while the second propose a linear increase of the CW implementing an exclusive backoff number allocation (EBNA) algorithm. In addition we are modifying the 802.11 medium access control (MAC) algorithm to use the clear to send to self (CTS-to-Self) protection mechanism prior to every transmission. Both the above techniques are simulated and compared with the classic 802.11 MAC. The results show that the overall performance of the network can be improved using these alternative MAC methods

Expanding the use of CTS-to-Self mechanism for reliable broadcasting on IEEE 802.11 networks

The growing need for multimedia applications within wireless Local Area Networks (LAN) demands reliable and efficient broadcasting and multicasting transmission of throughput sensitive data, like audio and video. IEEE 802.11 standard which is the primary technology in wireless LANs was not initially designed to handle heavy broadcasting traffic. However, this raises a series of reliability problems mainly related to the lack of an effective feedback mechanism for multicasting and broadcasting transmission. This inherited drawback does not allow the standard to take full advantage of the bandwidth offered by its latest amendments. The main aim of this work is to offer an alternative congestion control mechanism especially for broadcasting. For this, the expanding use of the CTS-to-Self protection mechanism is proposed. The Medium Access Control (MAC) algorithm is appropriately modified and tested under various data traffic conditions. The simulation shows that the use of this amended MAC method in conjunction with the suitable data packet size can significantly improve throughput, in multimedia type data broadcasting over wireless ad-hoc networks

A Modified IEEE 802.11 MAC for Optimizing Broadcasting in Wireless Audio Networks

The use of network infrastructures to replace conventional professional audio systems is a rapidly increasing field which is expected to play an important role within the professional audio industry. Currently, the market is dominated by numerous proprietary protocols which do not allow interoperability and do not promote the evolution of this sector. Recent standardization actions are intending to resolve this issue excluding, however, the use of wireless networks. Existing wireless networking technologies are considered unsuitable for supporting real-time audio networks, not because of lack of bandwidth but due to their inefficient congestion control mechanisms in broadcasting. In this paper, we propose an amendment of the IEEE 802.11 MAC that improves the performance of the standard for real-time audio data delivery. The proposed amendment is offering a solution for the balancing of data flow density in wireless ad-hoc networks for a multi-broadcasting environment. It is based on two innovative ideas. First, it provides a protection mechanism for broadcasting and second, it replaces the classic congestion control mechanism, based in random backoff, with an alternative traffic adaptive algorithm, designed to minimize collisions. The proposed MAC is able to operate as an alternative mode allowing regular Wi-Fi networks to coexist and interoperate efficiently with audio networks, with the last ones being able to be deployed over existing wireless network infrastructures