In this paper, we present a generic plug-and-play controller that ensures fair and efficient operation of IEEE 802.11 infrastructure wireless local area networks with multiple co-channel access points, without any change to hardware firmware of the network devices. Our controller addresses performance issues of TCP transfers in multi-AP WLANs, by overlaying a coarse time-slicing scheduler on top of a cascaded fair queuing scheduler. The time slices and queue weights, used in our controller, are obtained from the solution of a constrained utility optimization formulation. A study of the impact of coarse time-slicing on TCP is also presented in this paper. We present an improved algorithm for adaptation of the service rate of the fair queuing scheduler and provide experimental results to illustrate its efficacy. We also present the changes that need to be incorporated to the proposed approach, to handle short-lived and interactive TCP flows. Finally, we report the results of experiments performed on a real testbed, demonstrating the efficacy of our controller.
CENTAUR @cite_6 is motivated by the observation that when the traffic pattern is dominated by downloads, the IEEE 802.11 distributed coordination function (DCF) leads to wasted airtime in networks with hidden and exposed terminals. To tackle this, the authors in @cite_6 propose a centralized controller for hidden and exposed terminal links; the objective is to ensure that transmissions to hidden nodes do not happen simultaneously, while transmissions to exposed nodes overlap, in time, as much as possible. Links that are not associated with hidden or exposed nodes use the IEEE 802.11 DCF to access the medium. Handling exposed terminals requires carrier sensing to be effectively disabled. To achieve this, the authors in @cite_6 use fixed backoffs at the access points (APs) --- this requires modifications to the AP firmware. Since most firmwares are not open-source, it is difficult to incorporate such modifications.
@cite_6
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The performance of the distributed coordination function (DCF) of the IEEE 802.11 protocol has been shown to heavily depend on the number of terminals accessing the distributed medium. The DCF uses a carrier sense multiple access scheme with collision avoidance (CSMA CA), where the backoff parameters are fixed and determined by the standard. While those parameters were chosen to provide a good protocol performance, they fail to provide an optimum utilization of the channel in many scenarios. In particular, under heavy load scenarios, the utilization of the medium can drop tenfold. Most of the optimization mechanisms proposed in the literature are based on adapting the DCF backoff parameters to the estimate of the number of competing terminals in the network. However, existing estimation algorithms are either inaccurate or too complex. In this paper, we propose an enhanced version of the IEEE 802.11 DCF that employs an adaptive estimator of the number of competing terminals based on sequential Monte Carlo methods. The algorithm uses a Bayesian approach, optimizing the backoff parameters of the DCF based on the predictive distribution of the number of competing terminals. We show that our algorithm is simple yet highly accurate even at small time scales. We implement our proposed new DCF in the ns-2 simulator and show that it outperforms existing methods. We also show that its accuracy can be used to improve the results of the protocol even when the terminals are not in saturation mode. Moreover, we show that there exists a Nash equilibrium strategy that prevents rogue terminals from changing their parameters for their own benefit, making the algorithm safely applicable in a complete distributed fashion The IEEE 802.11 Distributed Coordination Function (DCF) is the fundamental access method providing asynchronous best-effort services in Wireless Local Area Networks (WLAN). In this standard, the currently employed Carrier Sense Multiple Access with Collision Avoidance (CSMA CA) and the Binary Exponential Backoff (BEB) mechanism represent major sources of energy consumption at both the access point and mobile stations of a WLAN. To improve energy efficiency in WLANs, this paper introduces an enhanced DCF protocol incorporating bidirectional transmissions in combination with sleep periods, called Bidirectional Sleep DCF (BDSL-DCF). By following this new scheme, every successfully established connection between a sender and its intended destination can be used to exchange data, hence reducing control overhead and channel contention. Furthermore, this functionality allows those mobile stations not participating in data transmission to activate the sleep mode to conserve energy. Simulation results show that BDSL-DCF can outperform DCF in terms of energy efficiency and throughput, with negligible impact on packet transmission delay. In this paper, a unified analytical framework is established to study the stability, throughput, and delay performance of homogeneous buffered IEEE 802.11 networks with Distributed Coordination Function (DCF). Two steady-state operating points are characterized using the limiting probability of successful transmission of Head-of-Line (HOL) packets p given that the network is in unsaturated or saturated conditions. The analysis shows that a buffered IEEE 802.11 DCF network operates at the desired stable point p=pL if it is unsaturated. pL does not vary with backoff parameters, and a stable throughput can be always achieved at pL. If the network becomes saturated, in contrast, it operates at the undesired stable point p=pA, and a stable throughput can be achieved at pA if and only if the backoff parameters are properly selected. The stable regions of the backoff factor q and the initial backoff window size W are derived, and illustrated in cases of the basic access mechanism and the request-to-send clear-to-send (RTS CTS) mechanism. It is shown that the stable regions are significantly enlarged with the RTS CTS mechanism, indicating that networks in the RTS CTS mode are much more robust. Nevertheless, the delay analysis further reveals that lower access delay is incurred in the basic access mode for unsaturated networks. If the network becomes saturated, the delay performance deteriorates regardless of which mode is chosen. Both the first and the second moments of access delay at pA are sensitive to the backoff parameters, and shown to be effectively reduced by enlarging the initial backoff window size W. The IEEE has standardized the 802.11 protocol for wireless local area networks. The primary medium access control (MAC) technique of 802.11 is called the distributed coordination function (DCF). The DCF is a carrier sense multiple access with collision avoidance (CSMA CA) scheme with binary slotted exponential backoff. This paper provides a simple, but nevertheless extremely accurate, analytical model to compute the 802.11 DCF throughput, in the assumption of finite number of terminals and ideal channel conditions. The proposed analysis applies to both the packet transmission schemes employed by DCF, namely, the basic access and the RTS CTS access mechanisms. In addition, it also applies to a combination of the two schemes, in which packets longer than a given threshold are transmitted according to the RTS CTS mechanism. By means of the proposed model, we provide an extensive throughput performance evaluation of both access mechanisms of the 802.11 protocol. The IEEE 802.11 standard for wireless local area networks (WLANs) employs a medium access control (MAC), called distributed coordination function (DCF), which is based on carrier sense multiple access with collision avoidance (CSMA CA). The collision avoidance mechanism utilizes the random backoff prior to each frame transmission attempt. The random nature of the backoff reduces the collision probability, but cannot completely eliminate collisions. It is known that the throughput performance of the 802.11 WLAN is significantly compromised as the number of stations increases. In this paper, we propose a novel distributed reservation-based MAC protocol, called early backoff announcement (EBA), which is backward compatible with the legacy DCF. Under EBA, a station announces its future backoff information in terms of the number of backoff slots via the MAC header of its frame being transmitted. All the stations receiving the information avoid collisions by excluding the same backoff duration when selecting their future backoff value. Through extensive simulations, EBA is found to achieve a significant increase in the throughput performance as well as a higher degree of fairness compared to the 802.11 DCF. This paper proposes a new protocol called Optimal DCF (O-DCF). O-DCF modifies the rule of adapting CSMA parameters, such as backoff time and transmission length, based on a function of the demand--supply differential of link capacity captured by the local queue length. O-DCF is fully compatible with 802.11 hardware, so that it can be easily implemented only with a simple device driver update. O-DCF is inspired by the recent analytical studies proven to be optimal under assumptions, which often generates a big gap between theory and practice. O-DCF effectively bridges such a gap, which is implemented in off-the-shelf 802.11 chipset. Through extensive simulations and real experiments with a 16-node wireless network testbed, we evaluate the performance of O-DCF and show that it achieves near-optimality in terms of throughput and fairness and outperforms other competitive ones, such as 802.11 DCF, optimal CSMA, and DiffQ for various scenarios. Also, we consider the coexistence of O-DCF and 802.11 DCF and show that O-DCF fairly shares the medium with 802.11 via its parameter control. Abstract Safety and efficiency applications in vehicular networks rely on the exchange of periodic messages between vehicles. These messages contain position, speed, heading, and other vital information that makes the vehicles aware of their surroundings. The drawback of exchanging periodic cooperative messages is that they generate significant channel load. Decentralized Congestion Control (DCC) algorithms have been proposed to minimize the channel load. However, while the rationale for periodic message exchange is to improve awareness , existing DCC algorithms do not use awareness as a metric for deciding when, at what power, and at what rate the periodic messages need to be sent in order to make sure all vehicles are informed. We propose an environment- and context-aware DCC algorithm combines power and rate control in order to improve cooperative awareness by adapting to both specific propagation environments ( e.g. , urban intersections, open highways, suburban roads) as well as application requirements ( e.g. , different target cooperative awareness range). Studying various operational conditions ( e.g. , speed, direction, and application requirement), ECPR adjusts the transmit power of the messages in order to reach the desired awareness ratio at the target distance while at the same time controlling the channel load using an adaptive rate control algorithm. By performing extensive simulations, including realistic propagation as well as environment modeling and realistic vehicle operational environments (varying demand on both awareness range and rate), we show that ECPR can increase awareness by 20 while keeping the channel load and interference at almost the same level. When permitted by the awareness requirements, ECPR can improve the average message rate by 18 compared to algorithms that perform rate adaptation only. Summary One critical issue in multihop ad-hoc networks is the medium access control (MAC). The IEEE 802.11 MAC protocol is originally designed for fully connected, one-hop ad-hoc networks but not for multihop ad-hoc networks. In addition to the well known hidden-terminal problem, we found that IEEE 802.11 also suffers from an erroneous reservation problem which occurs when RTS-CTS exchange fails but the channel is incorrectly reserved. In this paper, we propose a jamming-based MAC (JMAC) protocol that is not only free from both the hiddenterminal and the erroneous reservation problems but also allows more concurrent transmission receipt activities for stations within each other’s transmission range. The idea behind the JMAC is to separate source stations’ traffic from destination stations’ traffic into different channels (i.e. dividing the shared medium into two channels), and explicitly signal the channel status by jamming the channels. Simulation results show that although the channel division incurs some cost, the advantages of being free from the erroneous reservation and the hidden-terminal problems, and the benefits of more concurrent transmissions will compensate the cost and provide higher channel utilization when data frame size is median or large. Copyright # 2004 John Wiley & Sons, Ltd. Enterprise WLANs have made a dramatic shift towards centralized architectures in the recent past. The reasons for such a change have been ease of management and better design of various control and security functions. The data path of WLANs, however, continues to use the distributed, random-access model, as defined by the popular DCF mechanism of the 802.11 standard. While theoretical results indicate that a centrally scheduled data path can achieve higher efficiency than its distributed counterpart, the likely complexity of such a solution has inhibited practical consideration. In this paper, we take a fresh, implementation and deployment oriented, view in understanding data path choices in enterprise WLANs. We perform extensive measurements to characterize the impact of various design choices, like scheduling granularity on the performance of a centralized scheduler, and identify regions where such a centralized scheduler can provide the best gains. Our detailed evaluation with scheduling prototypes deployed on two different wireless testbeds indicates that DCF is quite robust in many scenarios, but centralization can play a unique role in 1) mitigating hidden terminals - scenarios which may occur infrequently, but become pain points when they do and 2) exploiting exposed terminals - scenarios which occur more frequently, and limit the potential of successful concurrent transmissions. Motivated by these results, we design and implement CENTAUR - a hybrid data path for enterprise WLANs, that combines the simplicity and ease of DCF with a limited amount of centralized scheduling from a unique vantage point. Our mechanisms do not require client cooperation and can support legacy 802.11 clients. This letter presents a new approach to evaluate the throughput delay performance of the 802.11 distributed coordination function (DCF). Our approach relies on elementary conditional probability arguments rather than bidimensional Markov chains (as proposed in previous models) and can be easily extended to account for backoff operation more general than DCF's one. In CSMA CA-based, multi-hop, multi-rate wireless networks, spatial reuse can be increased by tuning the carrier-sensing threshold (Tcs) to reduce the carrier sense range (dcs). While reducing dcs enables more concurrent transmissions, the transmission quality suffers from the increased accumulative interference contributed by concurrent transmissions outside dcs. As a result, the data rate at which the transmission can sustain may decrease. How to balance the interplay of spatial reuse and transmission quality (and hence the sustainable data rate) so as to achieve high network capacity is thus an important issue. In this paper, we investigate this issue by extending Cali's model and devising an analytical model that characterizes the transmission activities as governed by IEEE 802.11 DCF in a single-channel, multi-rate, multi-hop wireless network. The systems throughput is derived as a function of Tcs, SINR, beta, and other PHY MAC systems parameters. We incorporate the effect of varying the degree of spatial reuse by tuning the Tcs. Based on the physical radio propagation model, we theoretically estimate the potential accumulated interference contributed by concurrent transmissions and the corresponding SINR. For a given SINR value, we then determine an appropriate data rate at which a transmission can sustain. To the best of our knowledge, this is perhaps the first effort that considers tuning of PHY characteristics (transmit power and data rates) and MAC parameters (contention backoff timer) jointly in an unified framework in order to optimize the overall network throughput. Analytical results indicate that the systems throughput is not a monotonically increasing decreasing function of Tcs, but instead exhibits transitional points where several possible choices of Tcs can be made. In addition, the network capacity can be further improved by choosing the backoff timer values appropriately. In this paper, a mathematical model for the beacon-enabled mode of the IEEE 802.15.4 medium-access control (MAC) protocol is provided. A personal area network (PAN) composed of multiple nodes, which transmit data to a PAN coordinator through direct links or multiple hops, is considered. The application is query based: Upon reception of the beacon transmitted by the PAN coordinator, each node tries to transmit its packet using the superframe structure defined by the IEEE 802.15.4 protocol. Those nodes that do not succeed in accessing the channel discard the packet; at the next superframe, a new packet is generated. The aim of the paper is to develop a flexible mathematical tool able to study beacon-enabled 802.15.4 networks organized in different topologies. Both the contention access period (CAP) and the contention-free period defined by the standard are considered. The slotted carrier-sense multiple access with collision avoidance (CSMA CA) algorithm used in the CAP portion of the superframe is analytically modeled. The model describes the probability of packet successful reception and access delay statistics. Moreover, both star and tree-based topologies are dealt with; a suitable comparison between these topologies is provided. The model is a useful tool for the design of MAC parameters and to select the better topology. The mathematical model is validated through simulation results. The model differs from those previously published by other authors in the literature as it precisely follows the MAC procedure defined by the standard in the context of the application scenario described. In this paper, we focus on the Markov model of IEEE 802.11 distributed coordination function with power saving mode. The throughput evaluation is based on the model, with the comparison with the simulation result for validation. Furthermore, we notice that after each beacon transmission, there're more stations in contention than usual. Excessive contention results in high collision probability and low throughput. To solve this problem, we propose a downlink access scheme which can be used in both the basic access scheme and the access scheme with RTS CTS. This novel scheme enables AP to constrain the number of stations in contention to be an optimal value. Simulation results prove the performance improvement declared. The proposed scheme can be extended for multi-rate or multi-service WLANs. Distributed processing through ad hoc and sensor networks is having a major impact on scale and applications of computing. The creation of new cyber-physical services based on wireless sensor devices relies heavily on how well communication protocols can be adapted and optimized to meet quality constraints under limited energy resources. The IEEE 802.15.4 medium access control protocol for wireless sensor networks can support energy efficient, reliable, and timely packet transmission by a parallel and distributed tuning of the medium access control parameters. Such a tuning is difficult, because simple and accurate models of the influence of these parameters on the probability of successful packet transmission, packet delay, and energy consumption are not available. Moreover, it is not clear how to adapt the parameters to the changes of the network and traffic regimes by algorithms that can run on resource-constrained devices. In this paper, a Markov chain is proposed to model these relations by simple expressions without giving up the accuracy. In contrast to previous work, the presence of limited number of retransmissions, acknowledgments, unsaturated traffic, packet size, and packet copying delay due to hardware limitations is accounted for. The model is then used to derive a distributed adaptive algorithm for minimizing the power consumption while guaranteeing a given successful packet reception probability and delay constraints in the packet transmission. The algorithm does not require any modification of the IEEE 802.15.4 medium access control and can be easily implemented on network devices. The algorithm has been experimentally implemented and evaluated on a testbed with off-the-shelf wireless sensor devices. Experimental results show that the analysis is accurate, that the proposed algorithm satisfies reliability and delay constraints, and that the approach reduces the energy consumption of the network under both stationary and transient conditions. Specifically, even if the number of devices and traffic configuration change sharply, the proposed parallel and distributed algorithm allows the system to operate close to its optimal state by estimating the busy channel and channel access probabilities. Furthermore, results indicate that the protocol reacts promptly to errors in the estimation of the number of devices and in the traffic load that can appear due to device mobility. It is also shown that the effect of imperfect channel and carrier sensing on system performance heavily depends on the traffic load and limited range of the protocol parameters. We present a solution for enabling standard compliant channel access for a fully software-based Software Defined Radio (SDR) architecture. With the availability of a GNU Radio implementation of an Orthogonal Frequency Division Multiplexing (OFDM) transceiver, there is substantial demand for standard compliant channel access. It has been shown that implementation of CSMA on a host PC is infeasible due to system-inherent delays. The common approach is to fully implement the protocol stack on the FPGA, which makes further updates or modifications to the protocols a complex and time consuming task. We take another approach and investigate the feasibility of a fully software-based solution and show that standard compliant broadcast transmissions are possible with marginal modifications of the FPGA. We envision the use of our system for example in the vehicular networking domain, where broadcast is the main communication paradigm. We show that our SDR solution exactly complies with the IEEE 802.11 Distributed Coordination Function (DCF) as well as Enhanced Distributed Channel Access (EDCA) timings. We were even able to identify shortcomings of commercial systems and prototypes. This paper studies the performance of contention based medium access control (MAC) protocols. In particular, a simple and accurate technique for estimating the throughput of the IEEE 802.11 DCF protocol is developed. The technique is based on a rigorous analysis of the Markov chain that corresponds to the time evolution of the back-off processes at the contending nodes. An extension of the technique is presented to handle the case where service differentiation is provided with the use of heterogeneous protocol parameters, as, for example, in IEEE 802.11e EDCA protocol. Our results provide new insights into the operation of such protocols. The techniques developed in the paper are applicable to a wide variety of contention based MAC protocols. This paper characterizes the performance in terms of queueing stability of a network composed of multiple MIMO transmitter-receiver pairs taking into account the dynamic traffic pattern and the probing feedback cost. We adopt a centralized scheduling scheme that selects a number of active pairs in each time-slot. We consider that the transmitters apply interference alignment (IA) technique if two or more pairs are active, whereas in the special case where one pair is active point-to-point MIMO singular value decomposition (SVD) is used. We consider a time-division duplex (TDD) system where transmitters acquire their channel state information (CSI) by decoding the pilot sequences sent by the receivers. Since global CSI knowledge is required for IA, the transmitters have also to exchange their estimated CSIs over a backhaul of limited capacity (i.e. imperfect case). Under this setting, we characterize in this paper the stability region of the system under both the imperfect and perfect (i.e. unlimited backhaul) cases, then we examine the gap between these two resulting regions. Further, under each case we provide a centralized probing policy that achieves the max stability region. These stability regions and scheduling policies are given for the symmetric system, where all the path loss coefficients are equal to each other, as well as for the general system. For the symmetric system, we provide the conditions under which IA yields a queueing stability gain compared to SVD. Under the general system, the adopted scheduling policy is of a high computational complexity for moderate numbers of pairs, consequently we propose an approximate policy that has a reduced complexity but that achieves only a fraction of the system stability region. A characterization of this fraction is provided. In multihop wireless ad-hoc networks, the medium access control (MAC) protocol plays a key role in coordinating the access to the shared medium among wireless nodes. Currently, the distributed coordination function (DCF) of the IEEE 802.11 is the dominant MAC protocol for both wireless LANs and wireless multihop ad hoc environment due to its simple implementation and distributed nature. The current access method of the IEEE 802.11 does not make efficient use of the shared channel due to its conservative approach in assessing the level of interference; this in turn affects the spatial reuse of the limited radio resources and highly affect the achieved throughput of a multihop wireless network. This paper surveys various methods that have been proposed in order to enhance the channel utilization by improving the spatial reuse. One critical issue in multihop ad hoc networks is the medium access control (MAC). The IEEE 802.11 MAC protocol is originally designed for fully connected, one-hop ad hoc networks but not for multihop ad hoc networks. In addition to the well known hidden-terminal problem, we found that IEEE 802.11 also suffers from an erroneous reservation problem which occurs when RTS-CTS exchange fails but the channel is incorrectly reserved. In this paper, we propose a jamming-based MAC (JMAC) protocol that is not only free from both hidden-terminal and the erroneous reservation problems but also allows more concurrent transmission reception activities for stations within each other's transmission range. The idea behind the JMAC is to separate source stations' traffic from destination stations' traffic into different channels (i.e., dividing the shared medium into two channels), and explicitly signal the channel status by jamming the channels. Simulation results show that the JMAC can provide higher channel utilization when system is in high traffic load and the frame size is medium or large. This paper analyzes the performance of a duty-cycled polling-based access mechanism that exploits the Transmission Opportunity Power Save Mode (TXOP PSM) defined in the IEEE 802.11ac to improve the energy efficiency of Wireless Local Area Networks (WLANs) based on the IEEE 802.11. The basic idea behind the proposed approach, named GreenPoll, is to enable contention free periods, based on polling with beacons, during which wireless stations can save energy by turning off their radio transceivers after exchanging data with the access point. The closed expression of energy efficiency of GreenPoll is formulated in this paper and is used to evaluate the performance of GreenPoll considering important parameters like the traffic load, packet length, data rate, and number of stations in the network. Both analytical and simulation results show the high energy efficiency of GreenPoll with gains of up to 330 and 110 when compared to the legacy Distributed Coordination Function (DCF) and the Point Coordination Function (PCF) defined in the IEEE 802.11, respectively.