In 802.11 WLANs, adapting the contention parameters to network conditions results in substantial performance improvements. Even though the ability to change these parameters has been available in standard devices for years, so far no adaptive mechanism using this functionality has been validated in a realistic deployment. In this paper we report our experiences with implementing and evaluating two adaptive algorithms based on control theory, one centralized and one distributed, in a large-scale testbed consisting of 18 commercial off-the-shelf devices. We conduct extensive measurements, considering different network conditions in terms of number of active nodes, link qualities, and data traffic. We show that both algorithms significantly outperform the standard configuration in terms of total throughput. We also identify the limitations inherent in distributed schemes, and demonstrate that the centralized approach substantially improves performance under a large variety of scenarios, which confirms its suitability for real deployments.
Centralized approaches. A significant number of approaches exists in the literature @cite_12 @cite_17 @cite_29 @cite_7 that use a single node to compute the set of MAC parameters to be used in the WLAN. With the exception of our CAC algorithm @cite_7 , the main drawbacks of these approaches are that they are either based on heuristics, thereby lacking analytical support for providing performance guarantees @cite_12 @cite_17 , or they do not consider the dynamics of the WLAN under realistic scenarios @cite_29 .
@cite_29 @cite_7 @cite_12 @cite_17
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We investigate the optimal selection of minimum contention window values to achieve proportional fairness in a multirate IEEE 802.11e test-bed. Unlike other approaches, the proposed model accounts for the contention-based nature of 802.11's MAC layer operation and considers the case where stations can have different weights corresponding to different throughput classes. Our test-bed evaluation considers both the long-term throughput achieved by wireless stations and the short-term fairness. When all stations have the same transmission rate, optimality is achieved when a station's throughput is proportional to its weight factor, and the optimal minimum contention windows also maximize the aggregate throughput. When stations have different transmission rates, the optimal minimum contention window for high rate stations is smaller than for low rate stations. Furthermore, we compare proportional fairness with time-based fairness, which can be achieved by adjusting packet sizes so that low and high rate stations have equal successful transmission times, or by adjusting the transmission opportunity (TXOP)limit so that high rate stations transmit multiple back-to-back packets and thus occupy the channel for the same time as low rate stations that transmit a single packet. The test-bed experiments show that when stations have different transmission rates and the same weight, proportional fairness achieves higher performance than the time-based fairness approaches, in terms of both aggregate utility and throughput. The MAC layer of the 802.11 standard, based on the CSMA CA mechanism, specifies a set of parameters to control the aggressiveness of stations when trying to access the channel. However, these parameters are statically set independently of the conditions of the WLAN (e.g. the number of contending stations), leading to poor performance for most scenarios. To overcome this limitation previous work proposes to adapt the value of one of those parameters, namely the CW, based on an estimation of the conditions of the WLAN. However, these approaches suffer from two major drawbacks: i) they require extending the capabilities of standard devices or ii) are based on heuristics. In this paper we propose a control theoretic approach to adapt the CW to the conditions of the WLAN, based on an analytical model of its operation, that is fully compliant with the 802.11e standard. We use a Proportional Integrator controller in order to drive the WLAN to its optimal point of operation and perform a theoretic analysis to determine its configuration. We show by means of an exhaustive performance evaluation that our algorithm maximizes the total throughput of the WLAN and substantially outperforms previous standard-compliant proposals. This paper introduces a mechanism which dynamically tunes the parameters of the 802.11e contention-based access method. The proposed mechanism aims at providing QoS as well as ameliorating the problem of delay asymmetry A number of works have tried to adjust the contention window in order to provide differentiated quality of service in IEEE 802.11-based wireless networks. By giving different service classes different CWs, the distribution of backoff intervals (chosen randomly, on the interval [O, CW]) will reflect the desired service classes. However, these protocols cannot deliver firm service guarantees while maintaining high network utilization, particularly under congested network conditions. In this article we propose a new MAC protocol featuring a sliding CW (SCW) for each network flow. The SCW dynamically adjusts to changing network conditions, but remains within a per-class predefined range in order to maintain a separation between different service classes. Each flow's SCW reacts based on the degree to which class-defined QoS metrics are satisfied. Simulation results show that compared to the enhanced distributed coordination function (EDCF) scheme of 802.11e, SCW consistently excels, in terms of network utilization, strict service separation, and service-level fairness.